5 things you may not have known about the first day of fall

Fall is (almost) here!
In Atlanta? Cool air is coming!
In Minnesota? Snow is coming!
In Florida? What?
While the first day of fall tomorrow means different things to different regions, here are five things that you may not have known about the fall equinox.

We have exactly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness on the equinox, right?

Wrong.

1. While equinox may be Latin for "equal night," describing the time of year when days and nights are equal in length, we actually have slightly more than 12 hours of daylight on the day of the equinox. For instance, on the fall equinox this year, Orlando will have 12 hours, 7 minutes and 10 seconds of daylight.

There’s several reasons for this, among them

A. The sun appears in our sky as a disc and not a point. Sunrise and sunset are defined as when the edge of the disc, rather than the center, crosses the horizon. The time it takes for the entire width of the sun to cross the horizon is time added to our daylight.

B. The atmosphere refracts, or bends, light rays. For a low-angle sun, this buys a few more minutes of daylight each day.

2.  The fall equinox is the time of year with the highest loss of daylight time from day to day. Orlando will lose one minute and 41 seconds of daylight between Sept. 22 and 23 this year. Seattle will lose three minutes and 24 seconds. Barrow, Alaska, will lose almost 10 minutes of daylight day to day during the equinox.

3. During the equinox, the Earth's "terminator" is vertical with respect to the Earth, exactly linking the North and South Poles. Sound like judgment day? It's not. The Earth's terminator is simply the dividing line between day and night as seen from space. Still a little confused? Check out this link: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140319.html

4. Is the sun directly over the equator on the equinox? Yes, but not the entire equator. Since the equator wraps the circumference of the center of the earth, the sun can only be directly over one point on the equator at the moment of the equinox. This year, at 10:21 a.m. EDT Sept. 22, the sun will be directly over a spot on the equator over the Atlantic Ocean, just north of Brazil.

5. True or false: you can balance an egg on one end on the equinox.
True. It's difficult, but if you try really hard, and if you're really careful, you can make an egg stand on one end during the equinox. And if it takes you a while to get the egg to stand, don't worry, you can try again during the other 363.25 days of the year that aren't equinoxes, because although there may be several ways to balance an egg on one end, none of them involves it being the equinox.                                                                                       
Now that we are headed into fall, Florida black bears are expected to become more active. 

Cox Media Group