Happy New Year!

No, I haven't completely lost my mind. I've just turned the clock back about 255 years.

New Year's Day coincided with the first day of spring in England and the American Colonies up until 1752. Back then the founders of our nation wished each other Happy New Year when the grass started turning green again. When George Washington had his New Year's parties, the flowers were starting to bloom in his backyard.

The fact of the matter is that England and its colonies celebrated New Year's on the first day of spring, which back then was on March 25. They were still operating under an old calendar with roots that dated back to Babylonian times.

Most of the western world, especially Roman Catholic countries, switched over to the Gregorian calendar back in the late 1500s. That calendar had Jan. 1 as the first day of the year. It was actually a correction of the Julian calendar that went back to 46 B.C., which also had Jan. 1 as the start of the New Year

England finally decided in 1750 that it was time to be in sync with the rest of the western world and adopted the Gregorian calendar.

When you think about it, the Babylonians didn't have such a bad idea after all. New Year's Day on the first day of spring makes sense — new life, a fresh start and the promise of many nice days to come.

So what does all this calendar stuff have to do with stargazing? Not much, but I thought it was interesting and I wanted to get your attention.

Astronomically, the start of spring is called the Vernal Equinox, and it's the time when the northern hemisphere starts to receive more of the sun's rays. It's coming up at 7:44 a.m. Friday.

As the Earth orbits the sun every year, its axis of rotation is tilted to this orbit by 23.5 degrees. This causes our seasons. All throughout the winter months our northern hemisphere has been tilted away from the sun's strongest rays, but Friday marks the day when both hemispheres receive equal amounts of the sun's radiation as it shines directly over the equator.

From then until June 21, the summer solstice and the first day of summer, the northern hemisphere will be tilted more and more toward the sun, and we'll have more and more daylight. On June 21, the sun will reach its highest noontime height for the year of 68.5 degrees above the southern horizon.

After the solstice, we start slipping away from the sun's strongest rays and after Sept. 22, the Autumnal Equinox, the southern hemisphere will be tilted more toward the sun and we'll head back toward winter. Oh joy!

So this coming Friday we'll see the sun rise directly in the east, rise to a noontime altitude of 45 degrees above the southern horizon, and set directly in the west.

The Vernal Equinox and the Autumnal Equinox are the only days of the year when the sun rises exactly in the east and sets directly in the west. If you commute on an east-west highway bring your sunglasses!

One more thing — the Vernal Equinox also means by definition equal daytime and equal nighttime of 12 hours each, but if you check you'll see that sunrise on the first day of spring here in Butler is at 7:23 a.m. and sunset is at 7:32 p.m. We actually have about 10 more minutes of daytime than nighttime.

What is this, another result of global warming?

No, but our atmosphere is the reason. Whenever any celestial object is seen near the horizon, like a rising or setting sun, its light is traveling through a lot more of our atmosphere than it is when it's higher up in the sky.

The thicker atmosphere near the horizon bends light so severely that objects seem higher in the sky than they actually are.

As crazy as this sounds, the sun may actually be physically below the horizon, but because of the bending of its light it will appear above the horizon.

This is called astronomical refraction. The bottom line here is that days will already be longer than nights. The actual even split of day and night will take place Tuesday on St. Patrick's Day!

Happy New Spring!

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and is author of the book, "Pennsylvania Starwatch," available at bookstores and at his Web site www.lynchandthestars.com.