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Archive for March 20, 2025

Ephemeris: 03/20/2025 – Spring has sprung!

March 20, 2025 Comments off

This is Ephemeris for Thursday, March 20th. Today the Sun will be up for 12 hours and 10 minutes, setting at 7:55, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:43. The Moon, 2 days before last quarter, will rise at 2:57 tomorrow morning.

At 5:02 AM this morning the Sun passed overhead on the Earth’s equator heading northward beginning the season of spring. It is called the vernal or spring equinox also the March equinox if you didn’t care which hemisphere you lived in. Anyway, our daylight hours become longer and longer until June 21st the first day of summer. We have been seeing the effects of all this because all winter long the daylight hours have been getting longer and now in the last few weeks our temperatures have begun to rise, especially last Friday and Saturday. Along with the increased daylight hours the Sun is also getting higher in the sky giving us a more concentrated heating, it’s light and heat not being spread out as much as it was during the winter.

The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EDT, UT – 4 hours). Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum

Sun's path on the equinox for TC-Interlochen
The Sun’s path through the apparent dome of the sky on an equinox day from the Traverse City/Interlochen area in Michigan. The Sun rises due east and sets due west. The Sun is plotted every 15 minutes. This is a stereographic projection which compresses the image near the zenith and enlarges the image towards the horizon. The blue azimuth and altitude marks are 15 degrees apart. Created using my LookingUp program and GIMP.
Categories: Ephemeris Program, Seasons Tags: ,