Twice a year, Earth tilts just right, giving nearly equal amounts of day and night across the globe. One of those moments arrives Monday: the fall equinox, officially ushering in the arrival of autumn. <\/p>\n
While equinoxes don\u2019t always fall on the same date, they occur in mid-September. This year\u2019s fall equinox happens Monday, Sept. 22, at 12:19 p.m. MDT, according to NASA<\/a>. It marks one of only two days each year when the sun shines directly over Earth\u2019s equator, creating nearly equal lengths of day and night. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cObserving and predicting equinoxes is one of the earliest skills in humanity\u2019s astronomical toolkit,\u201d NASA<\/a> notes. The word itself comes from Latin<\/a> \u2014 \u201caequus,\u201d meaning equal, and \u201cnox,\u201d meaning night.<\/p>\n The September equinox signals the start of shorter days and longer, cooler nights in the Northern Hemisphere. South of the equator, it\u2019s the opposite \u2014 spring begins and daylight stretches longer. <\/p>\n The autumn equinox across the world <\/p>\n The fall equinox has long been a time of balance, harvest celebration and reflection around the world. <\/p>\n In Japan, Higan<\/a> is observed during both the spring and autumn equinoxes, marking life\u2019s transitions. During this holiday, families honor ancestors by visiting graves, cleaning them and offering flowers or traditional Japanese foods. Chinese and Vietnamese communities celebrate the harvest moon<\/a> with family gatherings and mooncakes. <\/p>\n From Europe\u2019s Michaelmas<\/a> harvest feasts to the Mayans\u2019 Pyramid of Kukulkan<\/a> aligning with sunlight to form a serpent, each culture has its own unique way of celebrating the autumn equinox. <\/p>\n Equinoxes across the solar system <\/p>\n Equinoxes aren\u2019t unique to Earth. \u201cThey occur twice a year on every planet of the solar system,\u201d according to National Geographic<\/a>. On Saturn, for example, an equinox happens every 14.7 years and will last for about seven years, BBC\u2019s Sky at Night Magazine<\/a> reports. <\/p>\n This equinox offers skywatchers a bonus. \u201cThe ringed planet (Saturn) will be incredibly bright in the sky throughout September in the eastern evening sky and western early morning sky. On September 21, Saturn will be at opposition, meaning Earth will find itself in between Saturn and the Sun, temporarily lined up. This also means that Saturn is at its closest and brightest all year,\u201d NASA<\/a> says. <\/p>\n For those back on Earth, Monday\u2019s celestial moment is simpler: the official first day of fall. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twice a year, Earth tilts just right, giving nearly equal amounts of day and night across the globe.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[3125,79,193],"class_list":["post-173449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-news-feed-local","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}