40 Fun Facts About Midnight Sun

Long summer daylight helps farmers in which US state grow giant cabbages weighing more than 100 pounds?

Alaska's exceptionally long summer days push some vegetables to world-record sizes. Its state fair has run a giant cabbage contest since 1941, when the winner weighed just 23 pounds.

Which sport is played in Fairbanks every June at the Midnight Sun Game, which has never used artificial lights?

Baseball's Midnight Sun Game starts at about 10:30 at night and finishes around 1:30 the next morning. The first one was played in 1906.

For roughly how long does the Sun stay above the horizon without setting at the North Pole each year?

Six months of daylight at the North Pole are followed by roughly as long a spell of darkness. Through the bright half of the year, the Sun circles the sky without ever setting.

What name is given to the midnight sun's winter opposite, which lasts from late October to mid-February in Longyearbyen?

Polar night ends with a party in the Arctic town of Inuvik, whose Sunrise Festival greets the Sun's return after about thirty days below the horizon.

Which Russian city marks its bright June evenings with the White Nights Festival and a tall ship with scarlet sails?

St Petersburg lies south of the Arctic Circle, so the Sun does set, but in late June the sky never gets fully dark. The scarlet-sailed ship salutes the city's school leavers.

Which seabird sees more daylight than any other animal by migrating from pole to pole to catch two summers a year?

Arctic tern migrations are the longest known in the animal kingdom. The bird breeds in the far north, then flies to the Antarctic coast for the southern summer.

Which feature of planet Earth, also the reason for the seasons, makes the midnight sun possible near the poles?

Its tilted axis keeps the region around one pole facing the Sun right through Earth's daily spin in summer. The tilt is about 23.4 degrees.

In which month does the midnight sun reach its peak over Antarctica?

December brings the southern summer, so the Sun circles the sky over Antarctica without setting. Right on the Antarctic Circle, that happens on just one day of the year.

Rovaniemi, a Lapland city with a month of midnight sun each summer, calls itself the official hometown of whom?

Santa Claus has had Rovaniemi as an official hometown since 1980. The city centre lies about 6 km south of the Arctic Circle, close enough to keep the Sun up all night in June.

Arctic Norway's summer midnight sun gives way in the dark winter to which glowing sky display that tourists chase?

The aurora borealis needs a dark sky, and the far north of Norway has none in summer. No display can be seen there between late April and mid August.

Which Russian port, the largest city north of the Arctic Circle, has the midnight sun from late May to late July?

Murmansk stays ice-free all year thanks to the warm North Atlantic Current. Its spell of winter darkness is shorter than its sunlit one, at about 40 days.

Which Norwegian archipelago, home to the town of Longyearbyen, has no sunset from about 20 April to 23 August?

Svalbard lies about midway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. Its plants have adapted to use the long sunlit season to make up for the dark winter.

Which Norwegian city hosts the Midnight Sun Marathon each June, with a course that twice crosses its landmark bridge?

Tromsø sits about 350 km north of the Arctic Circle, so its runners race through a night when the Sun never sets. The first race was held in 1990.

Which small island is the only part of Iceland crossed by the Arctic Circle, a line due to leave it around 2047?

Grímsey lies 40 km off Iceland's north coast. The Arctic Circle creeps north by about 14.5 metres a year, and markers on the island show where it used to run.

Which atmospheric effect, also behind mirages, lets the midnight sun be seen up to 90 km south of the Arctic Circle?

Refraction lifts the Sun's image above the horizon when the real Sun is just below it. That is why Iceland's north coast gets a midnight sun despite lying just south of the line.

The Sun rises only once a year at the North Pole, just before which of the calendar's four turning points?

The spring equinox, around 20 March, brings the North Pole's one sunrise of the year. The poles have the slowest sunrises on Earth, with twilight lingering for weeks beforehand.

Bright nights under the midnight sun can upset sleep by suppressing which hormone, also sold as a jet lag remedy?

Melatonin production is cut by light, most strongly by blue light, so a bright sky at bedtime delays the body's sleep signal.

Which Christopher Nolan thriller starring Al Pacino is set in a far-northern town during weeks of constant daylight?

Insomnia sends Pacino's Los Angeles detective north to a murder case in a town where the summer sun never sets. It is a remake of a 1997 Norwegian film of the same name.

A five-day Midnight Sun festival in Sodankylä, Lapland, runs around the clock in honour of which art form?

Cinema takes over Sodankylä at the Midnight Sun Film Festival, first held in 1986 with guests including the directors Samuel Fuller and Jonathan Demme.

Which Arctic mammal has lost its daily body clock as an adaptation to long seasons of constant daylight and darkness?

Reindeer have little use for a 24-hour rhythm where the Sun stays up all summer and down all winter. In North America the same species is called caribou.

NASA's Phoenix lander photographed a midnight sun in 2008 from the arctic plains of which other world?

Mars has seasons too, and Phoenix landed above its version of the Arctic Circle during northern summer. The Sun circled overhead, so the lander could work around the clock.

Which planet, tipped over on its side, gives each pole about 42 years of sunlight followed by 42 years of darkness?

Uranus takes 84 Earth years to circle the Sun with its axis lying almost flat, so each pole takes a turn facing the Sun for half the trip.

Which sport is played through the night at the Arctic Open in Akureyri, Iceland, held at the summer solstice?

Golf at the Arctic Open is played through the bright northern night. The host club was founded in 1935 and is Iceland's second oldest.

Which city, the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state, has near-constant daylight in June and July?

Reykjavik lies just south of the Arctic Circle, so the Sun does slip below the horizon, but never by more than about 5 degrees in June.

Which line around the globe gets almost the same length of daylight all year, the opposite extreme to the midnight sun?

The Equator has days that barely change in length, at about 12 hours all year round. Its sunrises and sunsets are also the quickest on Earth.

The low midnight sun stretches which warm-lit period, prized by photographers and usually brief, to last all night?

Golden hour light is redder and softer because the Sun sits low in the sky. Far enough toward the poles, it can last the entire day in some seasons.

Which country is home to Inuvik's Midnight Sun Mosque, a building hauled 4,000 km north by truck and river barge?

Canada's Midnight Sun Mosque is the northernmost in the Western Hemisphere. It was built in Winnipeg and floated down the Mackenzie River to Inuvik, a town with 56 days of midnight sun.

A quarter of which Nordic country lies north of the Arctic Circle, with over 70 sunset-free days at its northern tip?

Finland pays for its bright summers in winter, when the Sun does not rise at all for 51 days at the country's northernmost point.

Which town, the northernmost in the United States and formerly named Barrow, gets more than 80 days of midnight sun?

Utqiagvik took back its Iñupiat name in 2016 after residents approved the change in a referendum. The Sun stays up there from about 10 May until the start of August.

Which ancient Greek, who sailed north past Britain, is the first person on record to describe the midnight sun?

Pytheas set out from the Greek colony of Massalia, now Marseille, in about 325 BC. His own account is lost, but later writers quote his reports of a far northern land called Thule.

Which Russian novelist wrote the short story White Nights, in which a lonely young man narrates four summer nights?

Dostoevsky published White Nights in 1848, early in his career. The story is told in the first person by a narrator who is never named.

Which Scottish island group calls its June nights of almost perpetual daylight the simmer dim?

Shetland is the northernmost part of the United Kingdom, about 170 km beyond the Scottish mainland and only around 230 km west of Bergen in Norway.

A 2019 publicity campaign claimed the midnight sun island of Sommarøy wanted to be the world's first zone free of what?

Time was the target: islanders had supposedly petitioned Norway's government to abolish clocks. It was a tourism marketing campaign, though the Sun really does stay up there for 69 days.

During white nights the Sun dips less than six degrees below the horizon, holding the sky in which named stage of dusk?

Civil twilight is the brightest of the three stages, light enough to read outdoors on a clear night without a lamp. The next stage down is named for navigation at sea.

The North Pole's sunlit season outlasts the South Pole's by a week because Earth reaches which orbital point in July?

Aphelion is Earth's farthest point from the Sun, where the planet travels slowest, so the northern summer lasts longer than the southern one.

Which research base stands at the South Pole itself, where each year brings just one sunrise and one sunset?

Amundsen–Scott Station is American, but it honours a Norwegian and a Briton: Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott, who led the first two expeditions to reach the pole.

Which Nunavut outpost, the northernmost continuously inhabited place on Earth, has midnight sun from April to September?

Alert is named after HMS Alert, a British ship that wintered about 10 km away in 1875–76. The Sun stays up there from 7 April to 4 September.

Which Swedish city, the country's northernmost and built to serve an iron ore mine, sees the midnight sun for 50 days?

Kiruna gets the midnight sun between 28 May and 16 July. In 1907 it opened a tram line that was the northernmost in the world.

Riksgränsen in Swedish Lapland stays open into June so visitors can enjoy which sport under the midnight sun?

Skiing at Riksgränsen runs from February to June, and from the end of May the lifts turn under the midnight sun. The resort lies about 200 km north of the Arctic Circle.

Which Indigenous people of Arctic Europe fly a flag whose red and blue circle stands for the Sun and the Moon?

The Sámi are called sons and daughters of the Sun in a poem that inspired the flag. Its circle comes from a symbol painted on shamans' drums.