Equinox
- cdavid508
- Sep 21, 2020
- 1 min read
The fall equinox occurs at 7:30 AM MDT Tuesday September 22. Yet sunrise is at 7:16 am and sunset at 7:24 pm MDT, my time zone. Why aren’t they exactly 12 hours apart? Few people know the answer to that question. Fewer care. An equinox is when the sun is exactly over the equator, so it would seem night and day should be equal everywhere on earth, but they’re not; daylight is 8 minutes longer than night where I live. Daylight will also be longer than night time at the equator. Why?
I’ll let you reflect on that - reflect on refraction.
There are some that would rejoinder “Why is it that Idaho seems 10 years behind NYC, yet its time zone says it‘s only 2 hours behind?“ A discussion for another time.
Those are the sunrise/sunset times for your specific location, not your time zone as a whole. Denver's sun sets a full half hour before yours does. I would have thought I was fully in the "who cares" camp, yet I logged in specifically to make this point.
Don't forget Idaho is also 10 years behind California, yet somehow an hour ahead of them too. Maybe that's why god is burning down their state.