Pictures show summer solstice 2024 at Stonehenge

The summer solstice on Thursday signals the end of spring in the Northern Hemisphere and the start of a brand-new season, one that promises more warmth and more sunlight. To mark the transition into summer 2024, the astronomical event serves as a kind of grand opening: everywhere above the equator, it will be the longest day of the year.

At Stonehenge, an prehistoric monument of massive stones that is now a protected heritage site in southern England, historians believe ancient people built a ceremonial circular structure from enormous sarsen stones with a specific intention to honor and celebrate the solstice. 

Mysteriously erected around 2,500 B.C.E., Stonehenge is thought to be a spiritual or ritual ground of some sort, although the true reasons why people conceived of the idea to build it, and what they may have used it for, are still unknown. The stones were raised and meticulously arranged in the late Neolithic, or Stone Age, period —a time when creating such a monument would have been a brilliant feat of advanced construction and engineering.