Equinox Explained.

9-21-16 SHORT HILLS: We’re back in NJ for a few days before we go to Los Gatos for a visit to the left coasters. We had an inch of rain here on Monday. The ground is still juicy.

It still feels summery here even though tomorrow the Autumnal Equinox occurs at about 10:21 EDT. Equinox means equal day and night, but that isn’t exactly true. Day is still about 10 minutes longer than night. Why, you might ask.

Well, there are two reasons that day and night aren’t equal until the 25th or 26th of the month. The first is that on the equinox, the center of the sun is above the horizon for twelve hours, but we mark sunrise and sunset as the first appearance of the upper edge of the sun to the last sight of the other edge as it sinks at sunset. That adds up to a few extra minutes at both ends of the day.

Also the atmosphere refracts, bends, the light rays from the sun toward us so that it appears above the horizon in the morning a little before it actually rises and appears to set a little after it actually does.

Incidentally, twilight, before the sun rises and after it sets, extends the daylight by about 45 minutes at each end of the day.

At any rate, we are in the dark half of the year until next March.


There's almost always a rose, even in fall.

Bluejay's back. We couldn't use the feeders in Vermont all season because of the presence of the bears  in the neighborhood so it's exciting to see the birds at the feeders here in NJ.