Speaking of Spring

[SpeakEasy]

Welcome Spring!!!

The spring equinox is the day the sun crosses the equator on its way toward the summer solstice. It is also the day where length of day and night are approximately equal throughout the world.

Here where I live, the sunrise today was at 6:12 AM and the sunset will be at 6:21 PM. That's 9 minutes more daylight than night. The day of equal daylight and night happened here late last week.

I'm curious as to whether today has equal day and night for any of you. What time was your sunrise today? What time is your sunset? How many hours and minutes of daylight does that give you? (You can look it up at weather.com and enter your zip code if you are in USA. If you are outside USA, you can still use weather.com, but you'll have to figure out for yourself how to find your sunrise and sunset times.)

Can anyone (wavery?) explain why the equinox does not have EXACTLY equal day and night?

[PLJ]

Here in Lakeville, Minnesota the sunrise was at 6:16 and the sunset is at 6:25.

In Liverpool, England the sunrise is 6:15 and sunset 6:25.

[TheViking]

Here in Socal today, the sun rises at 5:56 and sets at 6:05

[sully349]

Spring!??!  Its 35 degrees here and theres talk of snow. Gotta love March In Indiana! Thank God the coho are running or I'd be going bonkers waiting for warm weather...........

[unitydnk]

Welcome Spring!!!

The spring equinox is the day the sun crosses the equator on its way toward the summer solstice. It is also the day where length of day and night are approximately equal throughout the world.

Here where I live, the sunrise today was at 6:12 AM and the sunset will be at 6:21 PM. That's 9 minutes more daylight than night. The day of equal daylight and night happened here late last week.

I'm curious as to whether today has equal day and night for any of you. What time was your sunrise today? What time is your sunset? How many hours and minutes of daylight does that give you? (You can look it up at weather.com and enter your zip code if you are in USA. If you are outside USA, you can still use weather.com, but you'll have to figure out for yourself how to find your sunrise and sunset times.)

Can anyone (wavery?) explain why the equinox does not have EXACTLY equal day and night?

6:13/6:23
My guess is that it ether has to do with how close you are TO the equator or maybe it is the same reason we have leapyear...?

[ForestCreature]

12 h 8 m of sunshine today, crocus are blooming... tho at 34 it dosen't feel like spring yet.
 
 We got teased with 70*  8 days ago. I'm ready to go  :tent:
 
 

[wavery]

There are two equinoxes each year. The term originally referred to the two times of year when night and day are the same length, the modern definition of the equinoxes is the instant at which the center of the Sun crosses declination 0 (i.e., the celestial equator, which is the projection of the Earth's equator onto the sky). With this definition, day and night are not quite the same length on the equinoxes due to (1) refraction of light from the sun as it passes through the Earth's atmosphere and (2) the fact that sunrise and sunset are calculated from the limb (not the center). Both of these effects slightly lengthen "day" relative to "night."  

[TheViking]

Spring!??! Its 35 degrees here and theres talk of snow. Gotta love March In Indiana! Thank God the coho are running or I'd be going bonkers waiting for warm weather...........

What city are you from in NW Indiana?  I was born in South Bend.

[dthurk]

Just hitched up the PUP and took it from the backyard into the front driveway.  Was it in celebration of the first day of Spring?  Not sure.  Actually, I wanted to do it before the ground started a complete thaw and I had deep rutted tire tracks in the lawn (mud).  

Gotta calculate the number of days to our first camping trip of 2006.  It's going to come up fast.

[tlhdoc]

In central PA the sun rise/ sun set today are 0611/1819, so we have 8 more minutes of sunlight.  I drive 30 miles mostly east on my way to work.  It is just getting past the point where the sun is in my eyes all the way to work.  When the time changes to day light savings time I have to go through it all over again.:yikes:

[wavery]

In central PA the sun rise/ sun set today are 0611/1819, so we have 8 more minutes of sunlight.  I drive 30 miles mostly east on my way to work.  It is just getting past the point where the sun is in my eyes all the way to work.  When the time changes to day light savings time I have to go through it all over again.:yikes:

That's about typical 6-8 minutes is as close as you can possibly get to sunrise & sunset. The very instant that the sun's rays cross the azimuth of the equator, the refraction switches from south to north. The refraction of Sunlight is about 1 degree 0r 60 miles as the light travels through the Earth's atmosphere and hits the ground. Therefore, in one instant it switches about 120 (nautical) miles (about 2 degrees of latitude) or 8 about minutes in time.

[junklady]

Spring!??!  Its 35 degrees here and theres talk of snow. Gotta love March In Indiana! Thank God the coho are running or I'd be going bonkers waiting for warm weather...........

I hear you Sully, we are outside Ft. Wayne. I informed my 4 year old that it was the first day of spring today and he got all excited to go to the lake, go camping, etc. I then had to break his heart with the sad fact of what spring is really like in Indiana. Lucky for him our new pop up can be opened in our garage and him and his dad have had a few garage camp outs since we got it. We aren't planning our first camp out until Memorial Day but if we get a warm weekend between now and then I am dropping everything and finding someplace to camp  :frosty:  :mad:

[Old Goat]

Hey Wayne, Did you have to stand before King Neptune's court when you crossed Latitude Zero the first time, or did you just sorta sneak across with out him a know'n ?.........

[dthurk]

Hey Wayne, Did you have to stand before King Neptune's court when you crossed Latitude Zero the first time, or did you just sorta sneak across with out him a know'n ?.........

Good question!  Could be an interesting story here.  Well?  (Keep it clean!)

[wavery]

Hey Wayne, Did you have to stand before King Neptune's court when you crossed Latitude Zero the first time, or did you just sorta sneak across with out him a know'n ?.........

Actually it was kinda neat. I'll keep it short as I can. Although it is sort of a "Camping" story.

Our first trip across the equator was in '84. We were going from Palmyra Island (the most beautiful little spot on Earth):
http://www.janeresture.com/palmyra/
960 SW of Hawaii and 350 miles N of the equator to Western Samoa:
http://www.merriewood.com/pacific/wsamoa1.html
About 800 miles S of the equator. A voyage of about 1200 miles.

The wind is usually very light around the equator and we were becalmed (no wind) for several days. In fact, we spent about 2 days, drifting across the equator. The seas were absolutely "mirror" flat. You may have heard that term before but few people have ever actually experienced the reality of that phenomena. The skies were so clear at night that you could not see the horizon. There was no moon and the stars were absolutely brilliant. The sea was black with darkness and the reflection of the stars on the "mirror" calm seas gave us the illusion of being in outer space, completely surrounded by stars. We had to stay perfectly still on the boat for fear of disturbing this amazing site.

We didn't have GPS at that time, however, we did have Sat-Nav (precursor to GPS). We reached the equator around mid-day. I jumped overboard and swam across the equator (much to my wife's objections) for about a 1/2 mile. My wife had to start the boat's engine to come and pick me up. We then decided to motor for a few hundred miles, until we picked up a breeze. It really was an amazing experience that I'll never forget.

Thank you for bringing it up and allowing me to share that with you. I'm actually sitting here with tears in my eyes.