Equinox

Capital Region residents have been taking part in the annual Equinox Thanksgiving Day Community Dinner since 1969. But Equinox will not be delivering holiday meals this year — so others are stepping in to fill the void.

The autumnal equinox is here. It means Earth is now angled sideways to the sun. Since neither pole is tipped toward the Sun, days and nights should be equal. The main equinox event, other than declaring it the start of fall, is that the sun rises exactly in the east and sets precisely in the west, not southeast or northwest or anything else. The Sun is now more accurate than any compass.

The vernal equinox is here! The equinox is when every place on earth rotates perpendicularly into our planet's day/night line, the terminator. As a result, the sun rises precisely due east and sets exactly in the west. So it's the easiest day to find the exact cardinal compass directions from your home, or out any window.

Get ready for the spring equinox! Tune in to hear how sunlight grows at its maximum possible rate this week and what an equinox actually is.

The New York Farm Bureau says the price of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner is taking a double-digit price jump from last year's meal, and local charities are gearing up to feed thousands in need.

The summer solstice arrived earlier this week, a funny mixture of natural events and government rulings.

Now in late March, each day at noon, the Sun stands one full Sun diameter higher than it was the day before. Hear how knowledge about the Sun is now arriving in a flood thanks to an armada of dedicated solar spacecraft such as SOHO and Stereo.

If you’re hearing this Sunday, well, at 11:33 this morning Eastern Daylight Time, it’s the vernal equinox, when we read that "Day and night are equal." But some people must surely glance at their local sunrise and sunset listings and see that day is longer than night at the equinox. Real equality happened several days ago. The culprit is our atmosphere, which bends the sun’s image upward. But, hey, it’s close enough. Like the date itself. If "March 21" pops to mind, you're probably over 50. The final March 21 equinox happened 32 years ago.

Mars will come closer and closer as the year goes on. Venus’ extreme brilliance will be seen over most of the year, but it’s only now and the next two weeks that it hovers just above Mars. This week we’ll hear about our two nearest planetary neighbors, Mars and Venus, and why now is only time we’ll see them together.

With the holidays approaching and the pandemic showing no sign of mitigating, local providers say the hungry and the homeless will continue to be…