Nick Strobel has been a professor at BC for 27 years and writes the semimonthly astronomy column for The Californian.

Today marked the official start of winter with the December solstice. I use the past tense since the precise time of the solstice is when the sun reaches its absolute most southern point on the sky and that happened at 1:21 a.m. this morning, Pacific Standard Time.

Today marks the shortest amount of daylight -- the longest night of the year. Although the December solstice is the longest night of the year, the earliest sunset for the year was near the beginning of December, on Dec. 6 and 7 and the latest sunrise for the year is near the beginning of January, on Jan. 5 and 6.