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Midnight is the transition time from one day to the next – the moment when the date changes, on the local official clock time for any particular
jurisdiction Jurisdiction (from Latin 'law' + 'declaration') is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United States, areas of jurisdiction apply to local, state, and federal levels. J ...
. By clock time, midnight is the opposite of
noon Noon (or midday) is 12 o'clock in the daytime. It is written as 12 noon, 12:00 m. (for meridiem, literally 12:00 noon), 12 p.m. (for post meridiem, literally "after noon"), 12 pm, or 12:00 (using a 24-hour clock) or 1200 ( military time). Sola ...
, differing from it by 12 hours. Solar midnight is the time opposite to
solar noon Noon (or midday) is 12 o'clock in the daytime. It is written as 12 noon, 12:00 m. (for meridiem, literally 12:00 noon), 12 p.m. (for post meridiem, literally "after noon"), 12 pm, or 12:00 (using a 24-hour clock) or 1200 ( military time). Sola ...
, when the Sun is closest to the
nadir The nadir (, ; ar, نظير, naẓīr, counterpart) is the direction pointing directly ''below'' a particular location; that is, it is one of two vertical directions at a specified location, orthogonal to a horizontal flat surface. The direc ...
, and the
night Night (also described as night time, unconventionally spelled as "nite") is the period of ambient darkness from sunset to sunrise during each 24-hour day, when the Sun is below the horizon. The exact time when night begins and ends depends ...
is
equidistant A point is said to be equidistant from a set of objects if the distances between that point and each object in the set are equal. In two-dimensional Euclidean geometry, the locus of points equidistant from two given (different) points is the ...
from
dusk Dusk occurs at the darkest stage of twilight, or at the very end of astronomical twilight after sunset and just before nightfall.''The Random House College Dictionary'', "dusk". At predusk, during early to intermediate stages of twilight, enou ...
and
dawn Dawn is the time that marks the beginning of twilight before sunrise. It is recognized by the appearance of indirect sunlight being scattered in Earth's atmosphere, when the centre of the Sun's disc has reached 18° below the observer's hori ...
. Due to the advent of
time zone A time zone is an area which observes a uniform standard time for legal, commercial and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries between countries and their subdivisions instead of strictly following longitude, because it ...
s, which regularize time across a range of
meridian Meridian or a meridian line (from Latin ''meridies'' via Old French ''meridiane'', meaning “midday”) may refer to Science * Meridian (astronomy), imaginary circle in a plane perpendicular to the planes of the celestial equator and horizon * ...
s, and
daylight saving time Daylight saving time (DST), also referred to as daylight savings time or simply daylight time (United States, Canada, and Australia), and summer time (United Kingdom, European Union, and others), is the practice of advancing clocks (typicall ...
, solar midnight rarely coincides with 12 midnight on the clock. Solar midnight depends on longitude and time of the year rather than on time zone. In ancient
Roman timekeeping In Roman timekeeping, a day was divided into periods according to the available technology. Initially the day was divided into two parts: the ''ante meridiem'' (before noon) and the ''post meridiem'' (after noon). With the advent of the sundial c ...
, midnight was halfway between sunset and
sunrise Sunrise (or sunup) is the moment when the upper rim of the Sun appears on the horizon in the morning. The term can also refer to the entire process of the solar disk crossing the horizon and its accompanying atmospheric effects. Terminology A ...
(i.e., solar midnight), varying according to the
season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and ...
s. In some
Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the ...
, "midnight" has an additional geographic association with "
north North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north ...
" (as "
noon Noon (or midday) is 12 o'clock in the daytime. It is written as 12 noon, 12:00 m. (for meridiem, literally 12:00 noon), 12 p.m. (for post meridiem, literally "after noon"), 12 pm, or 12:00 (using a 24-hour clock) or 1200 ( military time). Sola ...
" does with " south"). Modern
Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...
, Belarusian,
Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...
, and Serbian languages preserve this association with their words for "midnight" or "half-night" (''północ'', ''поўнач'', ''північ'', ''пoнoħ'') also meaning "north."


Start and end of day

Midnight marks the beginning and ending of each day in civil time throughout the world. As the dividing point between one day and another, ''midnight'' defies easy classification as either part of the preceding day or of the following day. Though there is no global unanimity on the issue, most often midnight is considered the start of a new day and is associated with the hour 00:00. Even in locales with this technical resolution, however, vernacular references to midnight as the end of any given day may be common. Strictly speaking, it is incorrect to use " a.m." and " p.m." when referring to noon or midnight. The abbreviation a.m. stands for ''ante meridiem'' or ''before noon'', and p.m. stands for ''post meridiem'' or ''after noon''. Since noon is neither before nor after noon, and midnight is exactly twelve hours before and after noon, neither abbreviation is correct. However, many digital representations of time are configured to require an "a.m." or "p.m." designation, preventing the correct absence of such designators at midnight. In such cases, there is no international standard defining which arbitrary selection is best. In the United States and Canada, digital clocks and computers commonly display 12 a.m at midnight. The 30th edition of the ''U.S. Government Style Manual (2008)'', in sections 9.54 and 12.9b, recommended the use of "12 a.m." for midnight and "12 p.m." for noon. However, the previous 29th edition of the ''U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual (2000)'', in section 12.9, recommended the opposite. There is no further record documenting this change. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recommends avoiding confusion altogether by using "11:59 pm" or "12:01 am" and the intended date instead of "midnight" or "12:00 am". There are several common approaches to identifying and distinguishing the precise start and end of any given day. * Use of a 24-hour clock can remove ambiguity. The "midnight" term can be avoided altogether if the end of day is noted as 24:00 and the beginning of day as 00:00. While both notations refer to the same moment in time, the choice of notation allows its association with the previous night or with the following morning. * "Midnight" can be augmented with additional disambiguating information. A day and time of day may be explicitly identified together, for example "midnight Saturday night." Alternatively, midnight as the division between days may be highlighted by identifying the pair of days so divided: "midnight Saturday/Sunday" or "midnight December 14/15." * The approach recommended by the NIST ("12:01 a.m." or "11:59 p.m." instead of midnight) can be particularly helpful when any ambiguity can have serious consequences, such as with contracts and other legal instruments. * A clear convention may be legally defined or culturally promulgated. For example, the
Hebrew calendar The Hebrew calendar ( he, הַלּוּחַ הָעִבְרִי, translit=HaLuah HaIvri), also called the Jewish calendar, is a lunisolar calendar used today for Jewish religious observance, and as an official calendar of the state of Israel. ...
associates the start of a new day with sundown and midnight being a
relative hour Relative hour (Hebrew singular: / ; plural: / ), sometimes called halachic hour, seasonal hour and variable hour, is a term used in rabbinic Jewish law that assigns 12 hours to each day and 12 hours to each night, all throughout the year. A rela ...
falling six hours after sundown. Similarly, in traditional Arabic time at sunset, which marked the start of each new day, clocks were reset to 12:00. As noted above, however, such conventions or definitions may not be uniformly observed. * The
International Standards Organization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ) is an international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in Art ...
(ISO) in specification
ISO 8601 ISO 8601 is an international standard covering the worldwide exchange and communication of date and time-related data. It is maintained by the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and was first published in 1988, w ...
states: "midnight may only be referred to as '00:00', corresponding to the beginning of a calendar day." * The AP Stylebook assigns "midnight" to the day that is ending, not the day beginning.


References


External links


National Institute of Standards and Technology
{{Authority control Parts of a day Night