Happy [Winter/Summer] Solstice!

Happy [winter/summer] solstice, [southern/northern] hemisphere readers! As an astronomer I always feel like I should comment on these astronomically significant dates, and then I always end up forgetting or being too busy to write anything. This year, at least, it falls on a weekend and since I've been working from home I've been even more aware than usual of the lengthening nights the past few months. It's actually rather relieving to finally reach the solstice, to know that this is as dark as it gets, and the days will begin to lengthen again after today (even if it won't really be noticeable for a few weeks, and the actual coldest part of winter is yet to come).

On an astronomically-related note, I wanted to share a website I found recently, called thetruesize.com. The idea behind it is to allow you to compare countries' sizes on a map that takes into account the distortions present in the projection, specifically the very common Mercator projection. You can input a country (or U.S. state) name to create a transparent copy of it on the map, and drag it around. As it gets closer to or farther from the equator, it'll shrink or grow according to the distortion present at that latitude (none at the equator, and increasing towards the poles). I found it absolutely fascinating, since I'm aware that there is distortion, but don't have a mental idea of its magnitude.

Probably my favorite country to visualize the distortion is Greenland, which looks to be bigger than South America in the Mercator Projection due to its great distance from the equator. But actually drag a copy of it down to South America and you'll see it's much smaller than Brazil, and comparable in size to Argentina. Comparing it to the U.S., the distance from north to south across Greenland is actually only just larger than the distance from the southern tip of Mexico to the Canadian border.

Anyway, it's lots of fun to drag countries around the map and see how they compare (you can have multiple countries active at once and also rotate them, allowing you to play games like fitting as many countries into another continent as possible). Hopefully you too can enjoy appreciating just how big (or small!) the world can actually be. A hui hou!