The first day of summer arrives with the solstice on Wednesday, June 20, 2024, at 4:51 p.m. EDT.

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, Earth is tilting mostly toward the Sun. As seen from Earth, the Sun was directly overhead at noon 23.5 degrees north of the equator, at an imaginary line encircling the globe known as the Tropic of Cancer, named for the constellation Cancer the Crab, its northernmost point.