Today june,30,2008 what is the difference in days between solar and lunar calendars?

Question

I became intrigued by a fact derived from Alice in wonderland and was wondering how I could trace the information myself. So if anyone is particularly knowledgeable ...? thanks

Answer 1

Lunar calendars use totally different date systems, so there is no simple offset between lunar and solar dates. Today's date in the two most widely used lunar calendars:

Islamic calendar:

26 Jumaada al-THaany 1429 A.H.

Jewish calendar:

27 Sivan 5768

Answer 2

As I am familiar with the globally popular solar calender and my traditional calender (many English speaking Indians are not aware of this system, but follow the advice of trained persons). Allow me to follow these.

Lunar calender follows phases of the moon. Full moon to full moon is reckoned as one month. But in practice, it is new moon to new moon. In ancient Indian system, known popularly in the west as 'Hindu' system, each of the 30 days are named 'new moon', '1st day of waxing moon' etc. But this period doesn't start with sunrise or such solar events. However 'day' is solar and is reckoned from sunrise to sunrise of next day.

In this there is a shortfall of 11 days from the solar year of 365 days. After 3years, an extra month is inserted. That makes 3 days in excess. After 11 years a month is nullified. And so on. In Muslim calender it is not corrected to bring it on par with solar year.

Your question doesn't lead us anywhere. You haven't assumed nor fixed the starting point of both solar & lunar systems. How do you fix a point on a circle as the starting point? Time reckoning is a cycle and it should have definite 'start' and everyone must be conscious of, before start of discussion. One cannot assume all things!

The year starts with Spring equinox, as per solar calender. In Indian calender, being practiced traditionally to date, predominant custom is to start the year with the new moon falling near the spring equinox.

Now I think you may rephrase your question.

Answer 3

ugh, why do so many people ramble so much and spend so much useless time researching simple answers on wikipedia? They're not making themselves smarter anywayz!

the lunar calendar is based on the 28 day cycle of the moon.

the solar calendar is based on the amount of days it takes for the earth to make one complete orbit around the sun.

tadah!

Answer 4

I have checked with the Solex91 celestial mechanics program and I find that there was a new moon late on 28th April 1862 (GMT). It was therefore just over 2 days from new moon at the start of May 1862, so the 2 day offset would be correct for the rest of the month and the story is indeed accurate. The Hatter's watch was 2 days fast, not slow, but in the story, he simply says that it was 2 days wrong: http://www.planetfusion.co.uk/~pignut/ha...

For the current month of June 2008, the new moon occurred on the 3rd, so we are now in the 27th day of the lunar month and the error is 3 days. To find this information for any month, all you need is the date of the new moon.

There are lunar and luni-solar calendars such as the Islamic and Hebrew calendars in which months start with the new moon, but they don't always agree exactly with the astronomical new moon, so there can be an error of a day or so in some cases.