Light and sky
Twice a year, day and night are nearly equal almost everywhere on Earth, because the Sun is then directly above the equator.
The March equinox is the crossing northward: from then on, in the Northern Hemisphere, days outlast nights and gain several minutes of light per day, the fastest gain of the year. Greek astronomers placed the origin of celestial longitudes at this point, the vernal point, and the tropical zodiac, the one used in Western astrology, starts Aries at precisely this spot. In Hipparchus’s day, two centuries before the common era, the vernal point lay squarely in front of the stars of the constellation Aries. Since then, the precession of the equinoxes has moved it by about thirty degrees: it now lies in front of Pisces. The sign and the constellation have therefore gone separate ways, without the calendar of the seasons being bothered. In the Southern Hemisphere, the same date opens autumn.
- Element
- Fire
- Modality
- Cardinal
- Ruler
- Mars
- Point of the year
- March equinox
- Current season
- Libra