The Lantern Festival is approaching, and it is the first full moon night of the Year of the Tiger in the lunar calendar. Some members of the public have found that the Lantern Festival is very "naughty", last year's corresponding Gregorian calendar date is February 26, this year's corresponding Gregorian calendar date is February 15, and next year's corresponding Gregorian calendar date is February 5, which means that this year's Lantern Festival is 11 days earlier than last year, and next year's Lantern Festival is 10 days earlier than this year.
It is also the Lantern Festival, why is the Gregorian date early and late? Zhao Zhiheng, a member of the Chinese Astronomical Society and an expert on astronomy science in Tianjin, explained that the calendar used in ancient times on the mainland is called the lunar calendar, which is a luni-solar calendar, based on the absence of the moon, that is, the cycle of the lunar phase and the annual apparent movement of the sun.
The Chinese lunar calendar stipulates that the 30 days of the big month and the 29 days of the small month, with a total of 12 synodic months, is 354 days or 355 days; in the Gregorian calendar, the earth's rotation around the sun is a return year, the common year is 365 days, and the leap year is 366 days. The difference between the two is about 11 days.
In order to make up for the difference in the number of days from the year of regression, so as not to cause a serious disconnect between the month and the season, the method of adjustment is to arrange 13 months in some years, and there are two identical months, called "leaps". The rule of "leaping" is based on the twenty-four solar terms.
Due to the ingenious arrangement of "setting leaps" in the continental calendar, the Gregorian calendar date corresponding to the Lantern Festival every year is always either about 11 days in advance or postponed by about 19 days. This also causes that in some years, the Gregorian calendar celebrates the Lantern Festival in February, such as 2016 and 2025; in some years, the Gregorian calendar celebrates the Lantern Festival in March, such as 2018 and 2037.
The reporter flipped through the astronomical calendar and found that as far as the 100 years of the 21st century are concerned, the earliest Lantern Festival is February 4 in the Gregorian calendar, such as 2061; the latest Lantern Festival is March 5 in the Gregorian calendar, such as 2015.
Source Xinhua News Agency
Cheng Yan, a reporter from Zheng Bao's all-media, pictured
Edited by Luo Chan