Photograph Scotland's solstice skies as part of national picture project

Foula, ShetlandDavid Lewis

The early hours of Thursday June 21 is the summer solstice in the UK and STV is calling on everyone to join in a national photo project to photograph the shortest night of the year.

The solstice falls exactly at 23:09 GMT - or 00:09AM on Thursday in the UK as we are currently on British Summer Time - and STV is asking viewers and readers to participate in an experiment where we enlist your help to map Scotland's Mid-summer skies.

STV's weatherman Sean Batty said: "Here in Scotland we will have a day with around 17.5 hours of daylight. Beyond this date the nights will slowly start to draw back in as we head towards the winter solstice on the December 21 when there will be under 7 hours of daylight.

"Scotland never becomes completely dark during the days of mid-summer with northern areas such as Shetland and Orkney seeing the lightest conditions during the overnight periods.

"To celebrate the solstice this year I am asking people to send in pictures of the sky above them as close to midnight as possible and send them in so we can all see the difference in light levels across the country.

"You can get involved by adding your photo to the STV Weather photo pool on Flickr, or alternatively you can email your photo to me.

"If you use Twitter you can share your solstice photo using the hashtag #solsticesky on Twitter."

You can see them all the most recent solstice photos in this slideshow.

If people have added location information to their photos you will be also be able to see some of the most recent Solstice Sky photos that people have added to the STV Weather Flickr group on this map.

People who read this story also read