Seasonal hour

Relative hour (Hebrew singular: shaʿah zǝmanit / שעה זמנית; plural: shaʿot - zǝmaniyot / שעות זמניות), sometimes called halachic hour, temporal 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 relative hour has no fixed length in absolute time, but changes with the length of daylight each day - depending on summer (when the days are long and the nights are short), and in winter (when the days are short and the nights are long). Even so, in all seasons a day is always divided into 12 hours, and a night is always divided into 12 hours, which invariably makes for a longer hour or a shorter hour. At latitude, one hour can be about 45 minutes at the winter solstice, and 75 minutes at summer solstice. All of the hours mentioned by the Sages in either the Mishnah or Talmud, or in other rabbinic writings, refer strictly to relative hours.