solar calendar

solar calendar

      any dating system based on the seasonal year of approximately 365 1/4 days, the time it takes the Earth to revolve once around the Sun. The Egyptians (Egyptian calendar) appear to have been the first to develop a solar calendar, using as a fixed point the annual sunrise reappearance of the Dog Star (Sirius)—Sirius, or Sothis—in the eastern sky, which coincided with the annual flooding of the Nile River. They constructed a calendar of 365 days, consisting of 12 months of 30 days each, with 5 days added at the year's end. The Egyptians' failure to account for the extra fraction of a day, however, caused their calendar to drift gradually into error.

       Ptolemy III Euergetes of Egypt, in the Decree of Canopus (237 BC), introduced an extra day every four years to the basic 365-day calendar (this practice also having been introduced in the Seleucid calendar adopted in 312 BC). In the Roman Republic, Julius Caesar in 45 BC replaced the confused Roman republican calendar, which probably was based on the lunar calendar of the Greeks, with the Julian calendar. The Julian calendar assigned 30 or 31 days to 11 months but fewer to February; it allowed for a leap year every four years. The Julian calendar, however, made the solar year slightly too long by adding a full quarter of a day annually—the solar year actually runs 365.2422 days. By mid-16th century the extra time had resulted in an accumulated error of about 10 days. To correct this error, Pope Gregory XIII instituted the Gregorian calendar in 1582, dropping October 5–14 that year and omitting leap years when they fell on centurial years not divisible by 400—e.g., 1700, 1800, 1900.

* * *


Universalium. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужно решить контрольную?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Solar calendar — A solar calendar is a calendar whose dates indicate the position of the earth on its revolution around the sun (or equivalently the apparent position of the sun moving on the celestial sphere).Tropical solar calendarsIf the position of the earth… …   Wikipedia

  • solar calendar — noun a calendar based on solar cycles • Hypernyms: ↑calendar • Hyponyms: ↑Gregorian calendar, ↑New Style calendar, ↑Julian calendar, ↑Old Style calendar, ↑Revolutionary calendar …   Useful english dictionary

  • solar calendar — noun A calendar based on the movement of the Earth around the Sun, which defines the year. Dates indicate the position of the Earth during this revolution …   Wiktionary

  • Thai solar calendar — The Thai solar calendar, Suriyakati ( th. สุริยคติ), has been the official and prevalent calendar in Thailand since it was adopted by King Chulalongkorn in 1888, although the Western calendar year is sometimes used in business, and quite often in …   Wikipedia

  • CALENDAR — (Heb. לוּחַ, lu aḥ). The present Jewish calendar is lunisolar, the months being reckoned according to the moon and the years according to the sun. A month is the period of time between one conjunction of the moon with the sun and the next. The… …   Encyclopedia of Judaism

  • Solar — means appertaining to the Sun, our planet s star. Solar also has other meanings. Related to energy * Active solar * Passive solar ** Passive solar building design * Solar cell, a device that directly creates electricity from solar energy * Solar… …   Wikipedia

  • calendar — CALENDÁR, calendare, s.n. 1. Sistem de împărţire a timpului în ani, luni şi zile, bazat pe fenomenele periodice ale naturii. 2. Indicator sistematic (în formă de carte, agendă sau tablou) al succesiunii lunilor şi zilelor unui an. ♢ expr. A face… …   Dicționar Român

  • calendar — calendrical /keuh len dri keuhl/, calendric, calendarial /kal euhn dair ee euhl/, calendarian, calendaric, adj. /kal euhn deuhr/, n. 1. a table or register with the days of each month and week in a year: He marked the date on his calendar. 2. any …   Universalium

  • Calendar — For other uses, see Calendar (disambiguation). For the Gregorian calendar for this year, see Common year starting on Saturday. A page from the Hindu calendar 1871–1872. A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial,… …   Wikipedia

  • Calendar reform — A calendar reform is any significant revision of a calendar system. The term sometimes is used instead for a proposal to switch to a different calendar.Most calendars have several rules which could be altered by reform: * Grouping of days of the… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”