This week, Sunday Stills celebrates the beginning of spring (and autumn) now that the equinox has ushered in these highly anticipated seasons. I shared hints of spring HERE.
Spring arrived with the Vernal equinox on March 20th in the Northern Hemisphere, while folks living in the Southern Hemisphere celebrated the arrival of autumn. Their days will get shorter as they head toward winter while we in the northern hemisphere head into summer.
In addition to sharing some lovely images of spring and autumn, let’s discover the nerdy science behind the equinox.
According to National Geographic: “Every six months, once in March and again in September, an equinox splits Earth’s day almost in half, giving us about 12 hours of daylight and 12 of night.”
Most of us change our clocks during the same months for either equinox to observe daylight saving time. I admit I am still dealing with the effects of springing the clocks forward and losing that one hour of sleep, but I’m not complaining about the light mornings and evenings now.
“The equinox offers us a natural reset, a chance to recenter before moving forward.” – Mia Stiber Russh
So, yes, I believe most of us understand why and when the equinox happens on planet Earth. But did you know the equinox makes it more likely for us to see a lunar eclipse or an aurora…fact or fiction?
Why You May See the Northern Lights Near the Time of the Equinox
In this article, Is the Equinox the Best Time to Visit Northern Lights? Fact vs Fiction, author Nicholas Clark explains: “To understand why the auroras tend to be more frequent during the equinoxes, we need to look at the Russell-McPherron effect. During the equinoxes, the Earth’s magnetic field is better aligned with the interplanetary magnetic field carried by the solar winds. As a result, the alignment allows more particles to penetrate the Earth’s magnetosphere. As the particles penetrate deeper into the upper atmosphere, they create more vivid aurora displays.”
This app notification appeared on my phone on March 21, 2025. You can see on the left image the KP Index is 5.00! Excellent chance of seeing the northern lights where I live! The picture on the right shows the colored bands of intensity compared to where we live (Blue dot). Did I see an aurora one day after the equinox? NO…it was cloudy 😨
But I saw my share of northern lights in 2024, beginning with the May 10th show. The Kp Index that night was an astounding 9 on a scale of Kp0 to Kp9! The Kp index is the key metric Aurora watchers use to tell how strong a display of the Northern Lights will be and how far from the Arctic Circle they’ll be visible.
I always mistakenly believed Auroras only happened in the winter. In my own experience, I saw the aurora dazzle us in Northeastern Washington on May 10, 2024, a few weeks after the spring equinox.
2024 was a fantastic year for seeing active northern lights due to Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and all that science (read more here).
Miss Aurora appeared again on September 16, just days before the northern hemisphere’s Autumnal equinox, and again with another strong series of lights on October 7.
Three days later, October 10 featured an incredibly rare G5 CME event (Kp Index 9), which we saw while visiting the Northern Cascades in Northwest Washington.
What About Eclipses?
Lunar Eclipses occur twice a year during a full moon. They do NOT necessarily coincide with the equinox. But the month of March 2025 is a celestial bonanza complete with several events to pique the imagination!
According to the Greenwich Sentinel, “March 2025 is a showcase of celestial rhythms. Eclipses highlight the precision of planetary orbits, the equinox signals seasonal balance, and the planets stage their silent performances.”
- In early March, four planets—Venus, Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter—engaged in their own celestial dance.
- The International Space Station was visible in its orbit beginning March 10.
- The lunar eclipse, called the Worm Moon, not to be upstaged by yet another equinox, put on a 60-minute show on March 14.
I caught this lunar eclipse (with my camera) in November 2022, demonstrating that eclipses don’t always occur during the equinox.
On March 29, a partial solar eclipse will be visible in Eastern Canada and the northeastern US at dawn. It’s a busy month for all things celestial! 🌒
“The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.” – Henry Van Dyke
Closer to Home…
Eagles soar above, looking for nesting material and food for their eaglets…
Droplets form a dainty universe…
And four years ago, on March 21, we celebrated finally getting our keys to our home! What a great start to SPRING!
Sharing for Dawn’s Spring Festival, Hammad’s Weekend Sky, and Johnbo’s Cellpic Sunday.
Sunday Stills Photo Challenge Reminders
The Sunday Stills weekly-themed photo challenge is easy to join. You have all week to share and link your post. Please use your own original images, whether new or from your archives.
- Remember to title your blog post a little differently than mine.
- Please create a new post for the theme or link a recent one.
- Entries for this theme can be posted all week.
- Tag your post “Sunday Stills.”
- Don’t forget to create a pingback to this post so that other participants can read your post.
- I also recommend adding your post’s URL to the comments.
Thank you for your comments and links last week. A few of you mentioned having trouble leaving comments, and oddly, every comment posted, so thank you for sticking with it.
I can’t wait to see how you interpret this week’s theme! Creativity is encouraged, so please share your own photographs (old or new), poems, original short stories, and music inspired by the theme. Join me next week as we explore “National Take a Walk in the Park Day.”
How do you celebrate the onset of spring or autumn? Show us your changing seasons, sunrises and sunsets, cosmic photos, or special activities—the sky is the limit…
All posts are copyrighted on this blog. Please do not repost or reblog.
© 2025 Copyright — secondwindleisure.com — All Rights Reserved
Second Wind Leisure Perspectives 
What is YOUR perspective? Please include your name if WP identifies you as “anonymous.