Scottish independence: polling day - as it happened

I’m seeing some fantastic pictures of Scottish voters at polling stations this morning, including, cheeringly, young voters – this is the first vote in which 16- and 17-year-olds are eligible to have their say. Here are some of the best:

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My colleague Ben Quinn is in Strichen, where first minister Alex Salmond has just cast his vote for yes, accompanied by two first-time voters: Natasha McDonald and Lia Pirie.

Voting goes on until 10pm BST tonight, though anyone still in the polling station queue at that cut-off time will get the chance to put their cross on the ballot paper.

Counting starts immediately after that, with the first results expected around 2am, with Eilean Siar, North Lanarkshire, Inverclyde, Orkney, East Lothian, Perth and Kinross, and Moray vying to be the first local authority to declare.

The results are cumulative – it’s a simple question of who gets more votes: yes or no.

But we probably won’t know for certain until the final results come in for three big cities that make up around a quarter of the electorate: Edinburgh and Glasgow at around 5am, and Aberdeen at 6am.

Throughout today and tonight, Alberto Nardelli, our data editor, along with the Guardian’s interactives teams, will be bringing live results and analysis, while the community team is scouring social media for news and reaction.

Our reporters out and about in the drizzle at polling stations across Scotland say voters are turning out in good numbers and good humour:

And for those voters still swithering:

My colleague Aisha Gani has put together this compilation of 11 – 10 is so last-election – highlights of the referendum campaign. Sky News presenter Kay Burley calling a yes supporter “a bit of a knob” is in there, naturally. Did you miss it? Here it is again:

Jamie Murray, tennis-playing brother of Andy (who earlier tweeted his own, slightly enigmatic, support for a yes vote), has tweeted his own, rather more explicit, views on today’s vote:

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My colleague Steven Morris is hanging out with voters in Dundee and sends this dispatch:

Tom Dumphie, 59, was first in the queue at the Mill of Mains primary school polling station in Dundee. “I was surprised – there were five or six in the line by the time I voted. This is going to be important not just for us but our kids and grandkids. But the atmosphere is friendly. I don’t think there’ll be tensions here.”

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A reader by the name of clearwood sends this contribution via GuardianWitness of yesterday’s final Yes rally in Glasgow:

You can add your own contributions here.

We’ve been hearing from our readers, via GuardianWitness, about the #indyref atmosphere where they are, from Kirkwall in the far north to Dumfries and Galloway in south west Scotland.

Take a look at the map of readers’ contributions so far; you can use the tool to zoom into different places. The largest clusters are in Glasgow and Edinburgh, but voters from there or elsewhere can still participate today by going to GuardianWitness.

Jackie Bailey, MSP for Dumbarton, tweets this picture from a local polling station:

There have been concerns that polling day would, in the words of a senior no campaign source, descend into “absolute carnage”, although this was rebuffed by Mary Pitcaithly, the chief counting officer. She said referendum agents had been given clear guidance that there should be nobody impeding access or distributing leaflets at polling places.

The Guardian team will be keeping an eye on this, of course, but reports so far are of cheery voters enjoying their moment of history.