What is the spring equinox?

It occurs every 20 or 21 March, indicating the return of sunshine, warmer temperatures, flowers and birds, bees and butterflies in the Northern Hemisphere. Or, for those who are Down Under, it sounds like the arrival of autumn. But what exactly is the spring equinox?

Is this an astronomical event? A holiday that was once characterized by the old people? Actually, it’s both. And do not let the name deceive you – just because those above the equator call it the spring equinox does not mean that it moves with the meteorological beginning of the season. The latter is not based on celestial events, but rather the annual temperature cycle and the 12-month calendar. This year, it fell on March 1st.

Because our planet is tilted on an axis, and as it orbits the sun, the hemisphere essentially swaps periods when they receive the sunlight and the warmest directly. The spring equinox, which takes place this year March 20 at 05:37 EDT, is the time when the sun sits directly over the earth’s equator as it heads north. Both hemispheres share the sun’s rays equally on the equation, and night and day are about the same length. In fact, the term equinox evolved from aequus, the Latin word equal, and nox, the word for the night.

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Together with the equinox of September, known among those in the Northern Hemisphere as the autumn equinox, the solstice also marks the beginning of new seasons. It occurs around the 21st in June and December, and marks the longest and shortest days of the year by sunlight, and is inverted above and below the equator, like the equator. The early civilizations found the spring equinox and these other heavenly events as a reliable way to keep track of the seasons, and many of today’s cultures pay homage to it just like their ancestors.

At the famous British site Stonehenge, as many as 1,000 druids and heathens gather annually on the spring equinox to watch the morning break over the prehistoric monument. In Mexico, El Castillo, between the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza, gathers even more on the same date to see the sun make shadows that look like a snake gliding along the pyramid steps. And the Persian New Year, known as Nowruz, is still seen by millions on the spring equinox.

It seems that mankind now has modern calendars to watch our seasons in the sun, where our planet rotates relative to the large, bright star in the sky is a method of being worthwhile.

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