This is derived from the oldest understanding of an equinox, which suggests it is the day when daytime and night are of equal duration.
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Each September on the 21st, 22nd or 23rd, the sun is directly above the equator, marking the autumnal equinox. The dates of zero tilt of the Earth’s equator correspond to the spring equinox and the autumn equinox.
But there is much to be thankful for with the arrival of the autumnal equinox – there’s pumpkin spice coffee, corn mazes, pumpkin patches, comfy sweaters, Halloween, and fall leaves.
Even though the equinox happens twice a year, every year, there are a lot of misconceptions about this seasonal transition. Equinox is Latin for “equal night”, meaning on this day there is about the same amount of daylight as darkness.
AUSTRALIANS have at least one reason to celebrate today as the sun heads back into the Southern Hemisphere. But the earth also constantly tilts at an angle of 23.5 degrees to that flat plane as it orbits the Sunday.
Autumn boasts the return of The X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing and Downton Abbey – which should get you through to winter safely. “So, you get slightly longer than the 12 hours of sunlight”.
Matthew Holman, an astrophysicist at Harvard University said: “The equinox is defined as the time of an event”. In the mornings, it means sunrise doesn’t move later as quickly as we would otherwise expect, since the sun takes a bit less than 24 hours to reach the same point in the sky each day.
Is the equinox always on the same day?
To mark the start of this great season, we’ve listed 10 of the best things about autumn – and we’d love to see your pictures if you’ve captured it on camera.
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Humans have always been interested in the sun’s movements, building physical monuments to measure and commemorate the giant star. This explains why the full moon nearest the equinox is often called the harvest moon.
