Source: History.com | Royal Museums Greenwich
Equinox comes from the Latin words “aequi,” which means equal, and “nox,” or night. On the equinox, day and night are of nearly equal length across the planet.
As the Earth orbits the sun, it is tilted at a fixed angle. For half the year, the North Pole is tilted slightly toward the sun, bringing longer days to the Northern Hemisphere, while the South Pole is tilted slightly away from the sun, bringing fewer hours of sunlight to the Southern Hemisphere. The equinox marks the point of the year where this transition occurs, and on the equinox the part of Earth closest to the sun is the equator, rather than places north or south.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the September equinox marks the first day of fall. Ancient cultures didn’t have clocks to calculate minutes of daytime and nighttime, but they could measure the sun’s position geometrically. People observed that the sun’s rising and setting points moved slightly each day of the year.
Archaeologists believe a number of prehistoric sites were used by ancient peoples to track the position of the sun and predict equinoxes and solstices. Some of these sites include Stonehenge and the Majorville Medicine Wheel in Alberta, Canada.
September 22nd marks the first day of fall!
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