Calendars: Science in Context (Back Ground information) A calendar is a system for describing the passage of days, weeks, months, and years. Early peoples used the lunar month--the interval occupied by a complete sequence of phases of the moon--to measure time. Because a lunar month contains about 29 1/2 days, a lunar calendar of 12 months results in a 354-day year. This is about 11 days less than the solar year--the length of time it takes the earth to make one complete orbit around the sun--which is approximately 365 1/4 days. This discrepancy confounded calendar makers for thousands of years. Early Mesopotamian cultures used a lunar year to calculate time. Sometime between 4000 and 3000 BC, the Egyptians adopted a 365-day year, with 12 months of 30 days each plus five extra end-of-the-year feast days.
The Chinese calendar, allegedly invented in 2637 BC by the legendary emperor Huangdi, contained 12 lunar months with the same seven-month, 19-year intercalation schedule. The Jewish Calendar. Rabbi with Arba'at Ha-Minim. During the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, one fruit and branches from three plants are waved during a special ceremony that represents service to God. The current definition of the Jewish calendar is generally said to have been set down by the Sanhedrin president Hillel II in approximately C.E. 359. The original details of his calendar are, however, uncertain. The Jewish calendar is used for religious purposes by Jews all over the world, and it is the official calendar of Israel. The Jewish calendar is a combined solar/lunar calendar, in that it strives to have its years coincide with the tropical year and its months coincide with the synodic months. This is a complicated goal, and the rules for the Jewish calendar are correspondingly fascinating.
Lunisolar calendars use months to approximate the tropical year. What does a Jewish year look like? An ordinary (non-leap) year has 353, 354, or 355 days. An ordinary year has 12 months, a leap year has 13 months. The Islamic Calendar. The Kabba. Mecca, Saudi Arabia. According to Islamic tradition, the cube-shaped Kabba dates back to the time of Abraham. It is the most sacred Muslim site, and the location towards which all Muslims face during prayer. The Islamic calendar (or Hijri calendar) is a purely lunar calendar. The calendar is based on the Qur'an (Sura IX, 36-37) and its proper observance is a sacred duty for Muslims. The Islamic calendar is the official calendar in countries around the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia. What does an Islamic year look like? The names of the 12 months that comprise the Islamic year are: (Due to different transliterations of the Arabic alphabet, other spellings of the months are possible.)
Each month starts when the lunar crescent is first seen (by a human observer’s eye) after a new moon. Although new moons may be calculated quite precisely, the actual visibility of the crescent is much more difficult to predict. So you can’t print an Islamic calendar in advance? Not a reliable one. Islamic Festivals Calendar and information. The Chinese Calendar. Chinese New Year Celebrations Chinese New Year parades have their origins in the California Gold Rush, when immigrants sought to share their culture. Today, New Year’s parades take place around the globe.
Chinese New Year is the main holiday of the year for more than one quarter of the world’s population. Although the People’s Republic of China uses the Gregorian calendar for civil purposes, a special Chinese calendar is used for determining festivals. Various Chinese communities around the world also use this calendar. The beginnings of the Chinese calendar can be traced back to the 14th century B.C.E. The Chinese calendar is based on exact astronomical observations of the longitude of the sun and the phases of the moon.
What Does the Chinese Year Look Like? The Chinese calendar - like the Hebrew - is a combined solar/lunar calendar in that it strives to have its years coincide with the tropical year and its months coincide with the synodic months. What Years Are Leap Years? Traditional Chinese Holidays and Festivals: Customs, Calendar. Brief Introduction Characterized by diverse styles and themes, traditional Chinese festivals are an important part of the country's history and culture, both ancient and modern. A close relationship exists between many of the traditional festivals and chronology, mathematics, the Chinese Calendar and the twenty-four solar terms. Many of the customs connected with the traditional festivals have links with religious devotions, superstitions and myths.
The form which most of the festivals take today was established around the time of the Han Dynasty (206BC - 220) and for many years, various eminent poets have written countless masterpieces describing the festivals and are still recited regularly today. Almost every festival has its own unique origins and customs which reflect the traditional practices and morality of the whole Chinese nation and its people. Chinese Calendar (Online Chinese / Gregorian Calendar) • Chinese Tools. Calendar Converter. Welcome to Fourmilab's calendar converter! This page allows you to interconvert dates in a variety of calendars, both civil and computer-related.
All calculations are done in JavaScript executed in your own browser; complete source code is embedded in or linked to this page, and you're free to download these files to your own computer and use them even when not connected to the Internet. To use the page, your browser must support JavaScript and you must not have disabled execution of that language.
Let's see… If the box above says “Your browser supports JavaScript”, you're in business; simply enter a date in any of the boxes below and press the “Calculate” button to show that date in all of the other calendars. Gregorian Calendar The Gregorian calendar is a minor correction to the Julian. While one can't properly speak of “Gregorian dates” prior to the adoption of the calendar in 1582, the calendar can be extrapolated to prior dates. Julian Day Julian Calendar Hebrew Calendar Mayan Calendars. Moon Information Resource And Guide.