Alan Olee Book Report

The Spring Equinox is here 03-20-15 – at least in the Norther Hemisphere of Earth.  I’ve always loved that word:  Equinox. 

An equinox occurs twice a year, around 20 March and 22 September. The word itself has several related definitions. The oldest meaning is the day when daytime and night are of approximately equal duration.^[2] The word equinox comes from this definition, derived from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night). The equinox is not exactly the same as the day when period of daytime and night are of equal length for two reasons. Firstly, sunrise, which begins daytime, occurs when the top of the Sun‘s disk rises above the eastern horizon. At that instant, the disk’s center is still below the horizon. Secondly, Earth’s atmosphere refracts sunlight. As a result, an observer sees daylight before the first glimpse of the Sun’s disk above the horizon. To avoid this ambiguity, the word equilux is sometimes used to mean a day on which the periods of daylight and night are equal.^{[3][note 1]} Times of sunset and sunrise vary with an observer’s location (longitude and latitude), so the dates when day and night are closest together in length depend on location.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox

Since the precised time of the Equinox occurs at different times depending on where you are, here’s a nice link that you can use to figure out your personal location’s Equinox.  Mine is 3:45 PM on the 20th.  http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/march-equinox.html  Your results may vary!

Oh did you know it is also a super moon and a total eclipse!  http://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar/2015-march-20

The eclipse will only be visible a few places – so watch the cool animation.  I’m sure someone is going to video the thing.

And finally, here’s a picture from the Phoenix, Arizona area the day before the Equinox:

Almost Spring!

I guess the arrival of Spring doesn’t get much traction around here because winters are so mild.  We got just a little bit of rain yesterday so the weeds are going to be going insane!  Definitely time to plan that garden -in fact it’s late!

Well, I hope spring brings you some good weather and some good times too!