![]() What is an Equinox? National Geographic, Naval Observatory, Astronomical Applications Department, Ĭhanging seasons, Climate Resource Collections, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, īoling, Josh, A Solstice Vignette, Wild About Utah, December 16, 2019, ![]() Which Pole is Colder?, Climate Kids, The Earth Science Communications Team, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Įarth’s Seasons – Equinoxes and Solstices – 2018-2025, The U.S. Kher, Aparna, Equinox: Equal Day and Night, Almost, Ĭity of North Logan, Utah, USA - Sunrise, Sunset, and Daylength, September 2020, Time and Date AS, SciJinks, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, ![]() The Equinox Isn’t What You Think It Is, PBS Digital Studios, Sound: Courtesy & Copyright Friend Weller, Utah Public Radio Photos: Courtesy, US National Weather Service(NWS), I’m Josh Boling, and I’m Wild About Utah! ![]() So, this week, take out your stopwatch, and turn your eyes skyward. Then, sadly, you don’t get an equilux at all, ever, because you always have more than twelve hours of daylight.ĭepending on where you live here in Utah, you will experience the equilux sometime on September 25th or 26th. That is, unless you live within 5 latitudinal degrees of the equator. As a rule, the closer one is to the equator, the longer they will wait for the equilux to occur in the fall and the sooner it will arrive in the spring. Because the Earth’s axis begins tilting away from the sun immediately following the autumnal equinox (or toward it following the vernal equinox), different latitudes will experience the equilux at different intervals. The equilux has to wait for Earth’s tilt to allow darkness to catch up.īut wait. So, on the day of the equinox, those several minutes of twilight before sunrise and after sunset offset the equal exposure of the sun’s rays to our hemisphere by a small margin, giving us a tad more daylight than night. We have several minutes of twilight before the sun rises and after it sets thanks to the lens-like refraction provided by our atmosphere. But, of course, the sun isn’t a light switch. We count daytime from the moment the sun peeks above the horizon to the moment it sinks below. This year’s autumnal equinox occurs at precisely 7:30 AM on Tuesday, September 22nd, and though daylight and night will share almost equal portions of the clock that day, they don’t split it evenly until two or three days later on what is called the ‘equilux’, meaning “equal light.” ![]() The equinox is the single moment when the Earth’s axis is pointing neither toward nor away from the sun, providing entire hemispheres equal portions of light. The word equinox is our late Middle English iteration of the Latin term for “equal night,” but, astronomically speaking, this isn’t exactly true. Its astronomical counterpart-the autumnal equinox-is a bit of a misnomer. Meteorological fall had promptly arrived. Favorite stands of aspens were already aglow above that familiar bend in the river. Temperatures plummeted, and the forests reacted. Finally in the canyon-the revelation that seasons had passed while we were away. raced west toward home from the high plains, trying to beat the heavy snow that had been forecasted for Labor Day evening. Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 2:26 | Recorded on September 21, 2020 ![]()
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