APOD 1.3

The Autumnal Equinox is upon us! Well, actually it already passed. It occurred yesterday (Sept 23) at 3:09 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), and at 11:03pm for us here on EST. The word 'Equinox' literally translates to 'Equal Night' from Latin. For those of you who know Latin (like myself), you might be thinking "Well wait a minute, Equi (from Equus) means Horse!" Well, the 'equi' that means equal is actually derived from Aequus, which does literally translate as Equal. 

Now, while the translation of Equinox is 'equal night', the concept is that the length of the night is equal to that of the day. Why they didn't call it 'Equidies' (dies means day) is beyond me, since you'd think they'd care more about the day, the time they get to spend awake, then the night. However, it is one less syllable, so they probably just liked it better. 

Now, the picture assigned to the Equinox celebratory day is slightly irrelevant, but it still looks cool. 

False-color image showing Ultraviolet light.

Here we have a image of the Sun. Now, what gives the sun it's interesting aura is not the fact that it is emitting light on the visible spectrum, but the ionized atoms within. The Iron that makes up less than 1% of the Sun's composition is emitting ultraviolet light due to the immense amount of ionization it has undergone. With this image, NASA was able to capture that light.

Now, on another interesting Equinox related story, there are two 'Equinox' themes for Ubuntu, a popular distro of Linux. It's a very aesthetically pleasing theme, and comes in several varieties. I'm actually currently using it's Equinox Glass variant. Here's a picture of the default theme: 

Standard Equinox Theme with Avant Window Navigator dock-bar in Ubuntu