Duncan Steel • Feb 24, 2020 •
Surprisingly enough, one could argue (as I often do) that the day inserted into a leap year is not that we label 29th February, but actually the 24th of February. Here I explain why, briefly. Almost everyone assumes that the day added into February in a leap year is the 29th, but that assumption is based on a lack of … Read More
Duncan Steel • Jun 05, 2019 •
The Islamic fast of Ramadan has come to an end, marking the beginning of the tenth month of the religion’s twelve-lunation year and therefore Eid al-Fidr, the ‘Festival of Breaking the Fast’. How the decision is made when each of those months begins and ends depends upon the actual sighting of the crescent new moon in the sky, a highly-complicated … Read More
Duncan Steel • Mar 20, 2019 •
We are generally habituated to using the Greenwich meridian as the global standard for mapping and time-keeping, despite it being only 135 years since its adoption. As I show here, if the Catholic Church had adopted in 1582 a more-precise calendar in terms of year length then a natural prime meridian results, in a location that might appear surprising. Read More
Duncan Steel • Dec 31, 2018 •
New Year is coming in a few hours (as I write), at least on the calendar used as the global standard. Not everyone counts years in quite the same way, though. It takes most of us a week or two to get used to the number of the year having changed. In the days when we still wrote … Read More
Duncan Steel • Dec 19, 2018 •
The date of Christmas is a matter many find confusing, and yet the adopted anniversary is easy to understand if you follow through the history, astronomy and human biology that are involved. Why is the Nativity commemorated on December 25th, when it is clear Jesus was not actually born on that date? And how can a year be termed “Before … Read More