Free Republic

Some 300 million people around the world are starting their annual celebration of renewal and harmony with nature in what is to them the biggest cultural holiday of the year, typically involving 13 days of rituals. Nowruz (alternatively spelled Nauruz, Nauryz, Navruz, Nevruz, Nooruz, Norooz, Norouz, or Novruz), also known as Persian New Year (Nowruz means “new day” in Persian), is celebrated across ethnic groups with a common Silk Roads heritage, including Afghanistan, India, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Turkey, as well as their diaspora in other countries. Watch more from TIME Click to Learn More AD pause volume_off...

Google commemorates Nowruz, the Persian New Year, with a vibrant doodle symbolizing equal daylight and darkness on the vernal equinox. The doodle features haft-sīn, a table Google has created a colourful and vibrant doodle to celebrate Nowruz, the Persian New Year. Nowruz means 'new day' in Persian and it aligns with the vernal equinox, marking the period when daylight and darkness are nearly equal in duration.The Google doodle consist of multiple colourful elements which represent the Persian culture. The doodle comprises of traditional calligraphy, floral designs and the most important tradition haft-sīn.For those unaware, Haft-sin is a distinctive table arrangement...

"Spring... arrive(d) on Saturday morning (March 20) with the occurrence of the vernal equinox. That occurs when the sun will be positioned directly over the Earth's equator at 09:37 Universal Time; 5:37 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time or 2:37 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time." snip "Every year around this time, almost like clockwork, I will get an email from someone who was studying the weather page of his or her newspaper, looking at the section listing the times of sunrise and sunset and noticing that something appears to be wrong."

Explanation: Today's date marks an Equinox and a New Moon. Remarkably, while the exact timing of both geocentric events occur within a span of only 13 hours, the moon also reaches its new phase only 14 hours after perigee, the closest point in its orbit. That makes the Equinox New Moon the largest New Moon of 2015, though hard to see since that lunar phase presents the Moon's dark, night side to planet Earth. Still, in this well composed image of a young lunar phase from late January you can glimpse both night and day on the lunar surface, the...