How the Equinox Happens

Oh, I just now saw that the Spring Equinox happened about 20 minutes ago (12:57 pm, EDT). Happy Equinox!

Then I started wondering whether anyone wondered how it is that we can have equal amounts of daylight and dark at a precise time of the day. (The answer is that the time–and the equinox–is determined by the moment when the sun appears to cross the equator, and that can be determined with arbitrary precision.)

Posted on March 20, 2014 at 13.30 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Explaining Things, It's Only Rocket Science

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