Each month, GuelphToday will share a Star Gazing Guide presented and organized by The Great Orbax, a science communicator from the University of Guelph's Department of Physics and local science education advocate.
Greetings Star Gazers!
Orbax here.
I’m a Science Communicator from the Department of Physics at the University of Guelph and I’m here to fill you in on what our March night skies hold for the Astro-curious out there, young and old.
In this month’s video, we chat about the visible planets and an upcoming lunar eclipse. But we also discuss the first day of spring, the vernal equinox, and what that means.
Equinox comes from the latin word aequinoctium, meaning ‘equal night’. On March 19th, we experience the vernal equinox, a day where we have equal hours of daylight and nighttime. This phenomenon occurs again six months later for the autumnal equinox, the first day of autumn. We dive into the physics behind this, and the solstices (the days where we have the longest and shortest daylight hours) in this month’s video.
Humanity’s knowledge of the stars, the moon, and the length of our daylight hours has an incredible history. The Julian calendar, created by Julius Caesar in 45 BCE, marked March 25th as the vernal equinox. Over the course of several centuries this date drifted, due in part to last month’s discussion about leap years, and when the Gregorian calendar was adopted in 1582, the vernal equinox claimed its current date of March 21st…ish.
It hops around this date a bit, occurring this year on March 19th.
What this means for us as a society is that our daylight hours will continue to increase until we reach the summer solstice on June 20, and with the incorporation of Daylight Saving Time on March 10th, our evenings will be longer and brighter than they have been over the past few months.
As a matter of fact, the Ontario city of Port Arthur was the first city in the world to adopt Daylight Saving Time, on July 1, 1908!
I hope you enjoy this month’s Star Gazing Guide. If you want to learn more, check out the March Star Gazing Guide video on the Guelph Physics YouTube channel. Not only is star gazing a great way to learn about space, planets and the stars, but it’s also a great way to spend time with other curious minds.
There has been a lot of talk about the upcoming April 8 solar eclipse in the news. I have prepared some videos about the science behind the eclipse and how to safely observe this event which you can find here.
This link includes an educators' resource page with links and video resources for use in the classroom.
Until next month, I wish you clear skies and I hope you take some time…to look up.
