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Monday, March 19, 2012

When Spring has Sprung

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of the gray, dingy, cold, depressing, miserable, disappointing Winter of our discontent. The last few days have been saying, "Well, the wait is just about over."

We orbit the Sun every 365.24+ days each year. Think of a clock face, with the Winter Solstice at 12 o’clock, and the Summer Solstice at 6 o’clock. Our planet moves counterclockwise on the clock face. Earth is now very near 9 o’clock, the Spring, or Vernal Equinox for the Northern Hemisphere. At 3 o’clock there is the Autumnal Equinox. (The Southern Hemisphere reverses these: they are entering their fall.)

If you join 12 o’clock to 6 o’clock with a line you have the major axis of our elliptical path around the Sun. Join 3 o’clock to 9 o’clock with another line you have the minor axis. If you could draw a circle with a very large compass (placing its point at where the two lines cross each other and the pencil at 9 o’clock), the area of the resulting circle would be 98% of the area of the ellipse: our orbit is said to be a 98% ellipse.

Now, the Sun and the Earth are moving rather quickly, so the exact moment of the Vernal Equinox for us this year will be at 5:14 am Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on March 20. (The Sun and the whole Solar System are moving in an orbit around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy at a velocity of 828,000 km/hr, making one rotation in about 230 million years.)

“UTC is the basis for time in many places around the world. It uses a 24-hour time scale, which is determined using highly precise atomic clocks. Time zones around the world are expressed as positive or negative offsets from UTC. The hours, minutes, and seconds that UTC expresses is kept close to the mean solar time at the earth's prime meridian (zero degrees longitude) located near Greenwich, England” (www.TimeandDate.com). We are 5 hours earlier than UTC, so the Vernal Equinox will occur at 12:14 am local time. (The folks in the Southern Hemisphere will enter Autumn, and will have to wait until September 22 for Spring.) Yes, the Sun – in

Cultures throughout history have celebrated the coming of Spring, thanking the gods for delivering them from the miseries of Winter. Sacrifices, feasts, wild parties and lots to drink were accessories to this time. It was important to know when Spring arrived so farmers knew when to plant their crops. The atmosphere was one of joy and rebirth.

Among the oldest such festival is Passover, a Jewish celebration of Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt. Christian Easter, the most important celebration in their calendar follows from this. Jesus was crucified after the Passover feast of Seder, in 30 CE. (See my column of 3/7/2011 for the problem with anno Domini.) Easter is a moveable feast, which means that it does not occur on the same date every year.

The Council of Nicaea (325 CE) set the date as the Sunday following the paschal full moon, which is the full moon that falls on or after the Vernal ( or Spring) Equinox.

Returning to our clock face, the Moon orbits Earth with one half always in sunlight. We see it as “full” when the centers of the Sun, Moon and Earth line up. The full moon after March 20 will be at 3:28:26 pm on April 6 this year. (They’ve got that down to the second!)

Easter Sunday for Western Christians falls on April 8, 2012.

Christian churches use March 21 as the starting point in determining the date of Easter, from which they wait for the Sunday following the next full moon. The Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox  Churches continue to use the Julian calendar. Their starting point in determining the date of Orthodox Easter is April 3 in the Gregorian calendar. In addition, the lunar tables of the Julian calendar are 4 days (sometimes 5 days) behind those of the Gregorian calendar. The 14th day of the lunar month according to the Gregorian system is only the 9th or 10th day according to the Julian. The result of this combination of solar and lunar discrepancies is divergence in the date of Easter in most years. Orthodox Easter will be on April 15.

Spring is certainly a worthy time.

1 Comments:

Anonymous college essays said...

Just now I realized that the seasons have such great impact on our life and how the Earth is rotating and revolving and bringing us something new everyday.

May 16, 2012 at 4:52 AM 

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