Midnight is the transition time from one day to the next – the moment when the date changes. In ancient Roman timekeeping, midnight was halfway between sunset and sunrise (i.e., solar midnight), varying according to the seasons. By clock time, midnight is the opposite of noon, differing from it by 12 hours.
Solar midnight is the time opposite to solar noon, when the Sun is closest to the nadir, and the night is equidistant from dusk and dawn. Due to the advent of time zones, which regularize time across a range of meridians, and daylight saving time, it rarely coincides with 12 midnight on the clock. Solar midnight depends on longitude and time of the year rather than on time zone.
In the Northern Hemisphere, "midnight" had an ancient geographic association with "north" (as did "noon" with "south" – see noon). Modern Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian and Serbian preserve this association with its word for "midnight" (północ, поўнач, північ, пoнoħ – literally "half- night "), which also means "north".
