Template talk:Solstice-equinox
Dates and times were obtained from the U.S. Naval Observatory, Astronomical Applications Department at aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/EarthSeasons.html.
Past years[edit]
Can anybody make it that the past years (ie 2002-2005) are another color? And the future years (ie 2007-inifity) to another color? And mabey set them automatically. thanks, it looks better. the old one is dull. --> --NatovR 16:28, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
past/present/future[edit]
I'd like to suggest that this chart be maintained to include the current year, five years of historical data, and five years of future data. It'll move the gold bar on its own, but the rest will have to be done manually. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 16:18, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
- This seems like a reasonable suggestion, and there have been no objections, so I have made additions and deletions to conform. Piperh (talk) 11:06, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
Equinox Mar[edit]
It is March equinox. Why using "Equinox Mar" in the table? I had changed it, but was reverted [1]. HTML2011 (talk) 12:03, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
Seasons[edit]
Templates are meant to give a specific set of information in several articles. This template was created to show exact date and time of the equinoxes and solstices. Adding the names of the seasons in the hemispheres does not add significant information when the months are given. So they must be considered clutter. The names of the months were abbreviated to avoid overwide columns. −Woodstone (talk) 04:58, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
small[edit]
Please don't force people to use glasses. I removed "small". The months are important as equinox/solstice. HTML2011 (talk) 15:58, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
Date and time[edit]
More date and time info can be found at
I couldn't find precision to seconds or even more. This would be useful for calculation of the tropical year. HTML2011 (talk) 18:53, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
Winter Solstice 2012 precise time[edit]
This is the crossover point from the 38 second "tick" to the 39 second "tock":
Date__(UT)__HR:MN:SC.fff ObsEcLon ObsEcLat 2012-Dec-21 11:11:38.000 269.9999939 0.0001750 2012-Dec-21 11:11:39.000 270.0000057 0.0001750
You can generate this at the "Horizons" server: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?horizons
Bulletin C of the IERS was issued on 5th January 2012 and it confirms that a positive leap second will be introduced into UTC at the end of June 2012.[1]
Hence, the solstice will occur on 21st December 2012 at 11:11:37.4 UTC precisely. Alongdewey (talk) 13:18, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
table errors[edit]
The entry for 2015 sep equinox said 8:20, but the source currently says 8:21. I fixed it. But what caused this error? Are there other errors in this master template table that need fixing?-96.233.20.34 (talk) 15:02, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
2015 sep Equinox: 2015-Sep-23 08:20:33.876[edit]
It is very difficult to find the exact times of solstices and equinoxes, to better than a minute of resolution -- and therefore hard to resolve discrepancies in various sources.
- stellafane.org/misc/equinox.html
- This source has a handy any-year calculator that gives
- TDT = Wed, 23 Sep 2015 08:21:33 GMT
- UTC = Wed, 23 Sep 2015 08:20:06 GMT
- but the footnotes explain that these times are only approximate, to about a minute of accuracy (and the following shows them to be about a half-min off).
- www.survival.org.au/solstice2013.php
- This is the best discussion of how hard it is to obtain exact times, and how to get them from an online NASA calculator:
- ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi
Using that engine yields:
Ephemeris Type [change] : OBSERVER Target Body [change] : Sun [Sol] [10] Observer Location [change] : Geocentric [500] Time Span [change] : Start=2015-09-23 08:20:30, Stop=2015-09-23 08:20:40, Intervals=20 Table Settings [change] : QUANTITIES=30,31 Display/Output [change] : default (formatted HTML) 2015-Sep-23 08:20:33.000 68.182392 179.9999901 0.0002366 2015-Sep-23 08:20:33.500 68.182392 179.9999957 0.0002366 2015-Sep-23 08:20:34.000 68.182392 180.0000014 0.0002366 2015-Sep-23 08:20:34.500 68.182392 180.0000071 0.0002366 Date__(UT)__HR:MN:SC.fff CT-UT ObsEcLon ObsEcLat
Which leads to:
2015-Sep-23 08:20:32.876 68.182392 179.9999887 0.0002366 2015-Sep-23 08:20:33.876 68.182392 180.0000000 0.0002366 2015-Sep-23 08:20:34.876 68.182392 180.0000113 0.0002366 The dynamical Coordinate Time scale is used internally. It is equivalent to the current IAU definition of "TDB".
Giving a final result of:
- 2015-Sep-23 08:20:33.876 UTC (+68.182392 = CT/TDB)
In conclusion, 8:20:34 and 8:21 UTC is the proper rounded time, 8:20 is understandable -- but 8:22 seems somewhat wrong, for any general usage.-96.233.20.34 (talk) 21:54, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
more precise Solstice and Equinox times[edit]
The English speaking world seems to be limited to approximate Solstice and Equinox times, to about the nearest minute.
The French offer a more precise, to the second, master table:
- fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mod%C3%A8le:Solstice-%C3%A9quinoxe
2013 20 11:01:55 21 05:03:57 22 20:44:08 21 17:11:00 2014 20 16:57:05 21 10:51:14 23 02:29:05 21 23:03:01 2015 20 22:45:09 21 16:37:55 23 08:20:33 22 04:47:57 2016 20 04:30:11 20 22:34:11 22 14:21:07 21 10:44:10 2017 20 10:28:38 21 04:24:09 22 20:01:48 21 16:27:57 2018 20 16:15:27 21 10:07:18 23 01:54:05 21 22:22:44 Références : mars • juin • sept. • déc. Institut de mécanique céleste et de calcul des éphémérides
Most WP readers do not care about this -- but some might like access to the more accurate times. How can we provide such access in a good way? Would we ever want to replace our template master table with a more-precise master table of times? -71.174.188.32 (talk) 15:45, 22 December 2015 (UTC)