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Systematically observing the sunrise, people discovered that it occurs between two extreme locations at the horizon and eventually noted the midpoint between the two. Later it was realized that this happens on a day when the duration of the day and the night are practically equal and the word "equinox" comes from Latin aequus, meaning "equal", and nox, meaning "night".
The Wheel of the Year in the Northern Hemisphere.Some Pagans in the Southern Hemisphere advance these dates six months to coincide with their own seasons.. The Wheel of the Year is an annual cycle of seasonal festivals, observed by a range of modern pagans, marking the year's chief solar events (solstices and equinoxes) and the midpoints between them.
The solstices, together with the equinoxes, are connected with the seasons. In some languages they are considered to start or separate the seasons; in others they are considered to be centre points (in England , in the Northern Hemisphere, for example, the period around the northern solstice is known as midsummer).
The first day of each month is shown in black, and the solstices and equinoxes are shown in green. It can be seen that the equinoxes occur approximately at altitude φ = 90° − 51.5° = 38.5°, and the solstices occur approximately at altitudes φ ± ε where ε is the axial tilt of the Earth, 23.4°.
This page was last edited on 20 December 2024, at 11:23 (UTC).; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License; additional terms may apply.
The exact instants of equinoxes and solstices are the times when the apparent ecliptic longitude (including the effects of aberration and nutation) of the Sun is 0°, 90°, 180°, and 270°. Because of perturbations of Earth's orbit and anomalies of the calendar , the dates of these are not fixed.
The angle of elevation will gradually change on an annual cycle, with the Sun reaching its highest point at the summer solstice, and rising or setting at the equinox, with extended periods of twilight lasting several days after the autumn equinox and before the spring equinox. Solstice day arcs as viewed from selected latitudes
equinox solstice equinox solstice; month March June September December year day time day time day time day time 2024 20: 03:07: 20: 20:51: 22: 12:44: 21: 09:20