Spring Equinox facts

While investigating facts about Spring Equinox 2019 and Spring Equinox 2020, I found out little known, but curios details like:

Chichen Itza was constructed so that on the spring and autumn equinox it creates the image of a snake slithering down the pyramid to honor the Mayan deity Kukulan, the Feathered Serpent.

how spring equinox happens?

Spring gets 30 seconds shorter every year due to a wobble in the Earth's axis. Astronomer L. Gerstman: “The shift in the time of the vernal equinox becomes more apparent. Spring will be shortest in the year 8680, (88.5 days), or 4 days shorter than this year’s.” After that it will lengthen again

What spring equinox means?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering explain what spring equinox is. Here are 24 of the best facts about Spring Equinox Rituals and Spring Equinox Supermoon I managed to collect.

what happens at spring equinox?

1. Autumnal equinox and fall equinox are often referred to as having the same meaning. The same can be said for spring equinox and vernal equinox.

2. Some people confuse the solstice with an equinox however an equinox occurs when day of night are of equal length and the sun is directly above the equator, which occurs twice each year and marks the beginning of spring and fall.

3. Japan celebrates the arrival of spring following the vernal equinox with the Cherry Blossom Forecast.

4. The vernal equinox marks the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere, but in the southern hemisphere it marks the beginning of autumn. This reverses in September.

5. About World Sleep Day® which is designed to raise awareness of sleep as a human privilege that is often compromised by the habits of modern life. It is is held on the Friday before Spring Vernal Equinox of each year. Future date will be: Friday, March 13, 2020.

6. The original Roman calendar, created in 738 B.C by Romulus, was 304 days and consisted of 10 months. It started on the spring equinox. This left a gap of 61 days between the end of a year and the start of the new year. The gap was later filled with Januarius and Februarius.

7. The Right Ascension of a celestial sphere object is measured along the celestial equator, with the zero point being the vernal equinox or where the sun is on the first day of spring. This measurement is always in hours, minutes, and seconds. One hour equals 15 degrees because there are 24 hours in a day and the celestial sphere rotates 360 degrees in one day.

8. The vernal equinox has been recognized for thousands of years and many rituals and traditions have developed in different cultures to celebrate the arrival of spring.

9. The autumnal equinox marks the change of seasons from summer to fall in the northern hemisphere and the change of winter to spring in the southern hemisphere.

10. The vernal equinox usually happens on March 19th, 20th, or 21st of each year, marking spring in the northern hemisphere. This date marks the autumnal equinox in the southern hemisphere.

Why is the spring equinox important?

You can easily fact check why is the spring equinox on the 20th by examining the linked well-known sources.

In the United States spring is celebrated with parties such as spring break, when students flock to beaches to party while taking a break from school.

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII decreed that 10 days be skipped in October so that the next Easter would fall on March 21st, the Spring Equinox, thus creating the Gregorian Calendar which we follow today. - source

'Spring is fireball season,' says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Center. 'For reasons we don't fully understand, the rate of bright meteors climbs during the weeks around the vernal equinox.'" - source

Some confuse the solstice with the equinox. Both occur twice a year, but the equinox occurs when the sun is directly above the equator, day and night are equal in length, and the equinox marks the beginnings of fall and spring, depending on the hemisphere.

Easter, and therefore also Whistsun, Ascension and (Dutch) Carnaval, depends on the first full moon after the spring equinox, so after March 21. Easter can be as early as March 22 and April 25 at its latest. - source

When spring equinox 2020?

Iranians celebrate the first day of spring at the exact moment the earth is at vernal equinox as the start of their new year. Their new year is just based on the earth's spring, nothing else.

How to celebrate spring equinox?

The Gregorian calendar was introduced because the lengths of the 4 seasons didn't match the time it took the Earth to fully revolve around the sun. They also had to take out 10 days of the new calendar so that the spring equinox would remain on the same day.

Neptune is so far from the Sun that it takes 123 years to go from the start of Spring-(vernal equinox) to the start of Winter-(winter solstice).

During the Spring Equinox, Canadian Inuit harvest mussels beneath the frozen ocean by climbing into small, shifting fissures left by the receding tide, and have less than an hour before the water returns. Lookouts warn those below but cannot yell too loudly for fear of collapsing the ice.

That, contrary to popular belief, the spring and winter equinoxes are neither halfway between the shortest and longest days of the year, nor do they have equal lengths of day and night The Equinox Isn't What You Think It Is

Imbolc/Imbolg is an ancient Gaelic holiday celebrated on Feb 1, the day halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Happy Imbolc!