General Discussion

Celerity

(43,333 posts) Thu Sep 22, 2022, 08:54 PM Sep 2022

When summer ends: it's not a day. It's a moment. (10 minutes from now as I post this)

Thursday’s fall equinox is at exactly 9:04 p.m., signaling the start of autumn

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/22/fall-equinox-autumn-first-day/?%20environment_5

https://archive.ph/wip/gnsgK

There are only two times each year when daylight and darkness are in near-perfect harmony everywhere on Earth.

One of them happens Thursday: The autumnal equinox arrives at 9:04 p.m. Eastern time, which marks the astronomical transition from summer to fall in the Northern Hemisphere (and winter to spring south of the equator).

What happens on the equinox?

The autumnal (fall) equinox is the halfway point between our longest and shortest days of the year, and usually falls on Sept. 22 or 23. Technically, an equinox is not a day-long astronomical event. It’s a brief moment in time when the sun appears directly over the Earth’s equator. Like the spring equinox in March, it’s one of only two points in the year when day and night are about 12 hours long everywhere on Earth.

In the Northern Hemisphere, daylight will continue to dwindle until the winter solstice, as the sun traces a shorter and lower path across the sky. The diminishing sunlight is the main reason trees burst into brilliant shades of red, orange and yellow before dropping their leaves for the winter. The location of sunrise and sunset will also edge closer to the southern horizon until December. During the equinox, the sun rises due east and sets due west everywhere on Earth except near the North and South poles.

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