Author: Forrest Brown / Source: CNN Travel
(CNN) — For those of us who approach things by the Goldilocks Principle (not too little, not too much), spring equinox is practically perfect.
That means we get that glorious balance of daytime and nighttime all over the world — from the equator extending to the poles — with just about 12 hours of each.
Spring equinox 2019 is coming on Wednesday, March 20, and it’s eagerly awaited around the globe.
For people in the Northern Hemisphere who have been shivering through a dark winter, it brings the promise of longer days, increasing warmth, a burst of flowers and more time outdoors.
For people in the Southern Hemisphere, especially in Australia, where they’ve been through a particularly brutal summer, it brings the blessed relief of cooler autumn days.
For thousands of years, people have celebrated this time of rebirth. We’ll look at some of the festivals, holidays and mysterious structures surrounding spring equinox, along with some of the science and facts behind it:
The term equinox comes from the Latin word “equinoxium,” meaning “equality between day and night.” And vernal also comes from Latin and means spring.
It turns out you actually get a little more daylight than darkness on the equinox, depending where you are on the planet. How does that happen?
As the US National Weather Service explains, the “nearly” equal hours of day and night are because of the complex way a sunrise is measured and the refraction of sunlight in our atmosphere.
This bending of light rays “causes the sun to appear above the horizon when the actual position of the sun is below the horizon.” The day is a bit longer at higher latitudes than at the equator because it takes the sun longer to rise and set the closer you get to the poles.
You get that truly equal day/night split a few days before the official spring equinox. That’s called the equilux.
If you want to be totally precise, it occurs at 21:58 UCT (Universal Coordinated Time) Wednesday, March 20. That’s 5:58 p.m. ET in the United States. Click this link to plug in your location and determine your local time.
Cultures and countries around the world mark spring equinox with various holidays. Here are a few of them:
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