Summer Solstice 2020! Google Doodle celebrates Earth's changing seasons

Google celebrated the summer solstice of June 20, 2020 for the Northern Hemisphere (and winter in the Southern Hemisphere) with fun Google Doodles. (Image credit: Google)

It's official: Summer is here for Earth's Northern Hemisphere while winter arrives in the south and Google is celebrating with artful style.

Google has unveiled two doodles to mark the 2020 June solstice, one for summer as it begins in the north today (June 20) and another for winter, which begins in the Southern Hemisphere. It also marks the day with the most daylight hours in the north, and the fewest in south.

The summer solstice is a moment when the sun reaches its farthest point north of the celestial equator in the sky. That will happen at 5:43:32 p.m. EDT (21:43:32 GMT), when the sun will reach a point directly overhead of the Tropic of Cancer (latitude 23.5 degrees north) in the central Pacific Ocean, 817 miles (1,314 kilometers) east-northeast from Honolulu.

Google's summer solstice doodle features an intrepid flamingo soaring through a sunny sky in an hot air balloon.

Google celebrated the winter solstice of June 20, 2020 for the Southern Hemisphere with this Google Doodle. (Image credit: Google)

While the solstice heralds hotter days for Earth's northern regions, it marks the shift from fall to winter (and longer nights) in the Southern Hemisphere. Google's doodle for the event featured a snowy night as a penguin sight-sees in a balloon.

So wherever you may be, have a happy summer (or winter) solstice for 2020!

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

Tariq is the award-winning Editor-in-Chief of Space.com and joined the team in 2001. He covers human spaceflight, as well as skywatching and entertainment. He became Space.com's Editor-in-Chief in 2019. Before joining Space.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times covering education and city beats in La Habra, Fullerton and Huntington Beach. He's a recipient of the 2022 Harry Kolcum Award for excellence in space reporting and the 2025 Space Pioneer Award from the National Space Society. He is an Eagle Scout and Space Camp alum with journalism degrees from the USC and NYU. You can find Tariq at Space.com and as the co-host to the This Week In Space podcast on the TWiT network. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Twitter @tariqjmalik.