Whether you like it or not, the day will be bright. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, today is the summer solstice, which marks the longest daylight period of the year and the official start of summer.
As The Weather Channel explains, it's also a little more special this year, because the solstice occurred on different days for different time zones.
The summer solstice happens when the sun is shinning directly overhead at midday at varying latitudes. That happened at 1:04 a.m. on Friday for the East Coast and at 10:04 p.m. Thursday for the West Coast.
"The solstice is split into separate days for different time zones this time around simply because the solstice happens to occur so close to midnight," Weather.com explains.
All that to say, welcome summer! We'll leave you with a few sunny images of how people marked the occasion across the globe:
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