Today is the autumn equinox, when the Sun heads north across the equator and our days continue to shorten.
North of the equator, folk celebrate the spring equinox. It is one of the two days each year with 12 hours of daylight everywhere except near the poles.
We havean earthbound view of the seasons, but an astronaut's perspective is much different.
From space, we would see our Earth spinning once every day and slowly circling the Sun over a year.
We would notice that it was spinning on a slight angle and that during our winter this tilt caused an area near the North Pole to remain continually lit, while an area near the South Pole was continually dark.
* John Dunlop is the information and senior education officer at Stardome Observatory on One Tree Hill, Ph 09 624 1246.
