Is today the TRUE Equinox?
 

I was always taught that the Spring Equinox occurred on or very close to the 21st of March, and on that day, the length of the day would be equal to the length of the night.

But today, checking sunrise & sunset times for my location, (pretty close to the Greenwich meridian), I see that sunrise was 06:10 and sunset will be 18:10, making it exactly a 12 hour day.

So how come?

Alcazar

0635 to 1833 here

In Grantham

Sunrise 06:13 (GMT)
Sunset 18:08 (GMT)

OKAY! :freak3:

We Radio Hams who use the twilight in order to make contacts all over the world noticed that too this morning. Yesterday(17th) sunrise and sunset were within a minute of the same time after 0600 and 1800. There is a program called DX Atlas which gives those time each day for where you live as well as pictorially showing the light and dark parts of the world in real time. We also found that the day that the Sun is aligned with the Equator, ie the 20th has a difference between sunrise and sunset of 12 minutes at my house anyway. The only reason I could think of is that that when sunrise arrives and when sunset appears, there maybe some distortion by the atmosphere which may make a difference in the way that the sun's rays reach the Earth.

It was an interesting discussion anyway :)

Les