Wednesday was literally the longest day of the year, with 14 hours, two minutes of sunlight.

That’s right: the summer solstice, which marks the day the earth finds itself closest to the sun on its annual 365-day long journey, took place on Wednesday. With 842 minutes of daylight here in San Antonio on June 20th, we thought we’d make it possible for you to experience that entire magical day again in a little under 1/1600th of the time.

Wednesday began with a bit of much needed rain, then cleared by around 10AM, leaving a beautiful Texas sky for its remains. The video below, taken from the 19th floor of the Westin Centre, captures the experience in 30 seconds. Thank you to our friends at Cox and Smith for letting us park our camera upstairs for 24 hours.

The footage begins at just before sunrise (6:35 AM) and ends just past sunset (8:37 PM).

Although San Antonio may be too far north to experience the sun directly overhead and we may not have our own scale Stonehenge at which to worship a host of sun and harvest gods, we can still celebrate the summer solstice and the beauty of downtown San Antonio.

–Donald Dimick

Rivard Report video editor & Trinity University student, Class of ’13.