It may have been time Sunday to consider the long and short of things, particularly on a heavenly scale, regarding the sun and moon.

       With Sunday’s proximity to the solstice, the time here between sunrise and sunset was about as short as it gets. And this short day fell at a time when the distance from here to the moon was about as long as it gets.

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       These long-and-short curiosities of the cosmos came two days from the Dec. 21 solstice, on a day that leaned in temperature a little more toward warm than wintry.

       The day’s preliminary average here was 51, according to the National Weather Service. That is 10 degrees above normal for the date. However, most of the afternoon was spent in the 40s.

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       In hourly reports, the Weather Service called Sunday cloudy — partly or mostly. But the day still had its slightly chilly charms, with the sun often in evidence.

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       Temperatures change, but the length of daylight is built in. The timeanddate.com website gave Sunday’s as nine hours, 26 minutes and 26 seconds. It listed Tuesday as shorter. By eight seconds.

       Meanwhile, the moon became full Saturday for the last time this year. It was known as the cold moon. More to the point, it was a faraway moon, near one of the extremes of its elliptical orbit, and more than 251,000 miles from us. That is more than 11,000 miles farther than average.