As we bid goodbye to summer, one of the most favored seasons is finally here. With its vivid colors and crustier days, September 23 marked the first day of fall season 2014.
Because of the season change, Google feted with a Doodle on its home page as we say hello to the first day of fall season 2014. It displayed an animation of black and white caricature figure hopping past five great trees, changing the leaves into gorgeous autumnal colors. With the character's concluding leap, the leaves fall from the trees, revealing the word "Google" in knotted branches. A huge red leaf then glides down and lands on the pleased character's head.
So when summer is over, what really happens to make the season change? - From winter to spring to summer then fall. The riposte is the conspicuously definable locus of the sun on the summer and winter solstices. According to the late Judith Young, a University of Massachusetts astronomy professor who told the National Geographic News in 2011 that the solstices are precise and perfectly measured as the northernmost point that the sun rises along the vista in June and the southernmost point along the horizon in December.
She added that in modern times, the solstice points became the astronomical definitions of when the summer and winter seasons begin. In the Northern Hemisphere, June features the summer solstice, while in the Southern Hemisphere, June marks the first day of winter. Since the equinoxes fall unevenly halfway between the solstices, they got attached as the beginnings of the other two seasons, fall and spring.
As we welcome the first day of fall season 2014, let's take a peek on the natural march of the seasons. The four seasons namely winter, spring, summer and fall are tortuously knotted to other natural processes, like the melting and freezing of Arctic sea ice. If you were standing at the North Pole on the autumnal equinox, you could see the sun scan across the vista, beckoning the start of six months of darkness. The cautious spectator would also note that Arctic sea ice has once again begun to form. The lowest extent of Arctic sea ice is on a continuing decline, a drift triggered in part by rising global greenhouse gases that's being closely trailed by experts.
This 2014, the first day of fall season was on September 23, the date where the autumn equinox fell in the northern hemisphere and where the day and night are of equivalent lengths. Equinox is a Latin term that means equal night and is derived from the phenomenon. While September marks the beginning of fall in the northern hemisphere, it is however the time where spring season begins in the southern hemisphere. Therefore South Pole inhabitants will be celebrating the first appearance of the sun in six months, while the North Pole dwellers will be preparing for six months of darkness.
Welcoming the first day of fall season 2014 implies a new beginning of life in each and every part of the world. One striking celebration of the autumn equinox is when the Druids and Pagans will gather to mark the Mabon Festival at Stonehenge, where the sun rises between the boulders. Mabon is when a livestock is slaughtered and preserved to provide enough food for the winter.
As the seasons change, people and everything around us change with them as well. And a new beginning looms as we embrace the magnificent glory of the first day of fall season 2014.
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