The Met Office explains the spring equinox.
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00:00This Monday is the spring equinox, which comes a few days before the spring equinox.
00:05So the equinox is on this Thursday. It's the 20th this year.
00:09The equinox is the point at which, when viewed from Earth, the sun crosses the equator,
00:14and, yeah, it's the start of astronomical spring.
00:17But the equinox is the moment when we have the closest to 12 hours of daylight.
00:24After then, we then have longer days than nights, which is welcome news for many of us.
00:28Now, we're often taught at school and in other places, incorrectly, say that that moment happens on the equinox.
00:34But actually, because the sunlight bends a little bit as it comes towards us,
00:38gets refracted a little bit through the atmosphere,
00:41and actually the sun appears as a disk in the sky rather than a little dot,
00:45and so the upper limb of the sun actually crosses the horizon,
00:49comes above the horizon a bit earlier than the center at sunrise,
00:52and stays above the horizon a bit longer at sunset,
00:56we actually get a few minutes more daylight than you might otherwise expect.
01:00And so that's why, in spring, the equinox happens a few days before the equinox.
01:04After this Monday, our days will be longer than nights.