Tag: Equinoxe

#365daysofbiking The world spins

March 18th – I keep banging on about equinoxes, and like the idiot I surely am, I thought I knew about them. It turns out like many things I think I understand, there’s so much more to it than I knew.

Today, the length of the daylight was near as damn it 12 hours: the sunrise was 6:16am and sunset a 6:15pm. Tomorrow, the daylight will be longer than night.

But this is not the equinox (when the sun crosses the equator). This is the equilux – equal light. Although, it’s not really equal at all: A number of factors including how we might use the three definitions of twilight complicate this.

I looked it up tonight and was fascinated. The equinox actually happens on March 20th this year – that’s Wednesday.

You can find out all the gory detail of how this stuff works at this excellent blog post here – the comments are worth a read too if you have time to spare.

You learn something new every day.

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September 22nd – Since we’re around the autumnal equinox, the sunsets get quite reasonable, just as they do at the spring one. Returning home through dark lanes, lights on full and feeling cold, this was my first taste of cold-season cycling. I find riding in the dark fun, challenging and mentally exhausting, and this ride more so, as I hadn’t done it for so long. But the sky was my companion, and it was beautiful. You’re never alone with a good sunset.

September 21st – Late afternoon, the heavens opened. It’s been a fairly dry month, so it wasn’t too bad. But it affected my mood: it’s now the autumnal equinox when day is the same length as night, and the earth neither tilts toward, or away from, the sun. We are now crossing into astronomical autumn and winter, and the driving rain and wet countryside reminded me of this. I feel like this every year, before the leaves turn and the countryside becomes once more golden. It never gets easier, if I’m honest. It’s hard being an outdoors person when the nights draw in.