On Wednesday morning, we collectively experienced the Vernal Equinox, when all of the latitudes on this old Earth received the same amount of light and energy from the sun. From now until June 21, the sun will get higher and higher in our skies and our days will get longer, which honestly makes it tough on stargazers like me because of the late night hours. I find myself taking in a little more caffeine the morning after spring star parties.
Anyway, it's the spring of the year. It's called spring because leaves begin to spring from the trees and other greenery springs from the ground. But if George Washington or Ben Franklin somehow magically passed you on the street this week, they might just wish you a Happy New Year. They might also wonder why you're tapping on that little flat rectangle in your hands. I don't think they would get texting, but wouldn't it be fun explaining it to them?
Back in the day of our nation's forefounders, New Year's Day coincided with the first day of spring. That's actually how it was in both England and the American Colonies up until 1752. Back when Washington had his New Year's bashes, the flowers were starting to bloom in his backyard.
At that time, the first day of spring was celebrated on March 25. England and the colonies were still operating under an old calendar with roots that dated back to Babylonian times. Most of the western world, especially the Roman Catholic countries, switched over to the Gregorian calendar in the late 1500s. That calendar had Jan. 1 as the first day of the year. It was actually a correction of the Julian calendar that went back to 46 BC, which also had Jan. 1 as the start of the New Year. The ancient Greeks had it right at the start.
The English decided in 1752 to be in sync with the rest of the western world and adopted the Gregorian calendar. Prior to that, English queens and kings were urged to get in sync with the rest of the word, but they were far too arrogant to agree, and believe me, you didn't want to push them too hard if you valued your life.
When you think about it, having New Year's Day on the first day of spring makes sense. New life, a fresh start and the promise of many nice days to come. So what does all this calendar stuff have to do with stargazing? Not a heck of a lot, but I thought you'd find it interesting.
Objects may seem higher
By the way, since you were a child, you were taught that the Vernal Equinox is the day we have equal daytime and nighttime of 12 hours each. If you check the almanacs for sunrise and sunset times for Wednesday, you'll see sunrise was at 7:09 a.m. and sunset was at 7:19 p.m. We actually have 10 more minutes of daytime than nighttime.
What's going on here? Do we have to adjust the Vernal Equinox date?
Actually our atmosphere is the reason. Whenever any celestial object is seen near the horizon, like a rising or setting sun, its light is traveling through a lot more of our atmosphere than when it's higher up in the sky. The thicker atmosphere near the horizon bends light so severely that objects seem higher in the sky than they actually are. As crazy as this sounds, the sun may actually be physically just below the horizon, but because of the bending of its light it will appear above the horizon. This is called astronomical refraction, so days are already longer than nights by the time of the Vernal Equinox. The actual even split of day takes place every year on St. Patrick's Day. Maybe the sun does shine on the Irish.
Despite the fact that we've turned the astronomical page to spring, there are still a lot of great constellations like Orion and others to enjoy. I'll have more on that in next week's Starwatch column. In the meantime, we have a full moon this week that will spoil hardcore stargazing, but the moon will help you find the planet Saturn later this week.
Finding Saturn
On early Friday morning, in the pre-morning twilight, the waning ovalish full moon will be lighting up the southwestern sky. Just to the upper left of the moon, less than the width of a fist held at arm's length, will be a moderately bright star. That's Saturn, and you can prove it to yourself with a small telescope or even a really good pair of binoculars. You should be able to least resolve the oval shaped ring system, and if your scope is large enough, you should be able to see the gap between the actual planet and the ring system.
On Saturday morning in the pre-twilight, the moon will have shifted eastward among the backdrop of stars so that Saturn will be just a little to the right of the moon. Right now, Saturn is 829 million miles from Earth. By the way, Saturn's ring system is so large that its 136,000 mile-wide diameter is more than half of the distance between Earth and our moon. Contemplate that as you view the moon and Saturn in their celestial hug.
(Lynch is an amateur astronomer and author of the book, "Stars, a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations." Contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.)