When the sun rises on Friday, it will be to a new season. This year Spring officially begins March 20 although looking at the snow outside, you’d never know it!
March 20 is the vernal equinox when the number of hours of light and dark in the day are equal. according to Wikipedia, the March equinox can happen on March 19, 20 or 21. At equinox the sun is directly above the equator, and the earth’s rotational axis is tilted neither toward nor away from the sun. This happens twice in a calendar year, first around March 21 and then again around Sept. 22. In the southern hemisphere, autumn begins at the same time as spring begins in the northern hemisphere and vice versa.
Many people around the world celebrate the vernal equinox on March 21 but in reality it occurs at a specific moment in time and the actual date at any given location is determined by the exact instant when the sun is over the equator in UTC time. Due to time zone differences, the equinox will occur a day earlier at locations that are behind UTC until 2048.
UTC is the equivalent of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) however the measurements differ. GMT is measured from midday whereas UTC is measured from midnight.
UTC is defined as the time at longitude 0° also called the Prime Meridian. The Greenwich Prime Meridian starts at the north pole and runs to the south pole, passing through eight European and African countries along the way. It gets the name Greenwich from the Royal Observatory of Greenwich in London, England. GMT is the average solar time calculated at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. GMT was established as a global standard in 1884.
The equinox would occur on the same day each year if Earth took exactly 365 days to make a complete orbit around the sun. But this is not the case. It takes the Earth about 365.25 days to go around the sun once. The Gregorian calendar accounts for this by adding an extra day, the leap day, almost every four years. This means that each March equinox occurs about six hours later than the previous year and this is why the dates of the equinox can change from year to year.
The March equinox has religious and cultural significance. For example, the date for Easter is calculated as the first Sunday after the first full moon after (or on) the vernal equinox, April 5 this year. Jewish Passover usually falls on the first full moon after the vernal equinox, April 1 this year.
In many Asian countries, Mother’s Day is celebrated on the vernal equinox.
The vernal equinox is the first day of various calendars, including the Iranian calendar. The spring equinox is also a holiday celebrated by people in Turkey, the north Caucasus and Albania. It is also a new Year’s holiday for Zoroastrians and som Muslims irrespective of ethnicity. New age pagans observe the March equinox, referred to as Ostra.
Best wishes to you today, whether you observe the March equinox as the beginning of a calendar year or the beginning of a new season.
