JulianDate.org

What Is Julian's Date?

The Julian date counts the dates in continuous order, without starting over every month. That means that instead of saying 12th Feb 2024, the Julian calendar will count the day as 24043. The Julian Period is based on medieval astrological beliefs that involved a close observation of the night sky.

Joseph Scaliger proposed the concept of scientific Julian dating in 1583. The surprising thing is that the Julian period is actually younger than the Gregorian calendar by one year! The Julian calendar tape may be confusing for beginners, but the significance of the Julian date is still enormous.

Astronomers and scientific software use the Julian date today to calculate the number of days between two important events. Many orthodox Christian churches also follow the Julian calendar to celebrate religious days. For example, Christmas in the Julian calendar falls on January 7th. 

Accounted from the beginning of 4713 BC (year 1). The cycle ended on January 22nd, 3268, AD. Each year was assigned a tricyclic character, with three numbers indicating the year's position. Many other scientists like Carl Friedrich Gauss and John Collins have also done a lot of work on the Julian calendar.

The first person to use Julian calendar was Ludwig Ideler in his 1825 work Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie.  The calendar is today used to identify phenomena in deep space and calculate planet and moon cycles at the greatest possible accuracy. Many of the principles of the Julian calendar were introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, after which the month July is named. According to this calendar 2024 is a leap year, meaning there is one extra day in February, meaning 29 days. 

How To Find Out Today's Julian Date?

Julian Day is the product of three calendar cycles. 28 (solar cycle) × 19 (lunar cycle) × 15 (indiction cycle) = 7980 years. The Julian day started on 1st January 4713 BC at noon, because noon was chosen as the starting time of the day. The first day was considered to be 0. 

At the moment, the Julian calendar lags behind the Gregorian calendar. This gap is one of 13 days. One of the reasons for this is that the Julian calendar believes that the year is 365 days and 6 hours long. However, according to Gregorian calculations, 6 hours was too much, and this period was shortened to 5 hours and 49 minutes. 

In the Gregorian Calendar, every century year that is not divisible by 400 is eliminated from the list of leap years. So to calculate a date manually, 13 days are added to the Gregorian date. According to the principles of mathematics, this gap will increase to 14 days by the year 2100. Julian Day coincides with any date since the 1990s.

JT = 2415020 + 365 × (year - 1900) + N + L - 0.5

Here, N is the number of days after the new year, L is the number of leap years, and 0.5 denotes half of a day since Julian's day starts from the noon period.

Where M is the number of months, and I is the day of the month.

Converting Julian's Date and Universal Time

Additionally to dates, the Julian calendar also has a different approach to daylight saving time adjustments. That means even though it is more accurate to identify planet cycles it is less accurate in accounting for the solar year differences. 

For any calculation regarding the Julian day today, universal time is always taken as EZ = 0. The decimal parts of the Julian date in modern time calculations are as follows: 0.1 = 2.4 hours 0.01 = 14.4 minutes 0.001 = 1.44 minutes 0.0001 = 8.64 seconds 0.00001 = 0.864 seconds

The 365-Day Julian Calendar

In 46 B.C., Julius Caesar formally adopted the 365-day Julian calendar. It changed the old lunar-based calendar. The Julian calendar included a leap year with an additional day every four years. As a result, each year in the Julian calendar had an average of 365.25 days. By 1582 AD, the Julian calendar was ten days behind the seasonal cycle. Pope Gregory XIII decreed the correction in October 1582, which involved removing ten days from the calendar. A leap year is no longer included in the new Gregorian calendar unless the year is divisible by 400.

Conclusion

The Julian calendar might not be suitable for everyday tasks because it makes the process of remembering a date very complicated. It is also a better choice if you want to track the passage of time in an instant or calculate time using decimal points. 

However, due to the inability of the Julian calendar to correctly identify solar years, it is slowly becoming less and less relevant to tracking astronomical seasons. It is also difficult to incorporate the concept of longitudinal difference in time when using the Julian calendar. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is the current Julian date?

Today's Gregorian date is and Julian Calendar today is .

What is Julian Date?

The Julian date counts the dates in continuous order, without starting over every month. That means that instead of saying 12th Feb 2024, the Julian calendar will count the day as 24043! known as the Julian date or Julian day.

When was the Julian calendar introduced?

The Julian date is sometimes misunderstood to refer to the Julian calendar, which was instituted by Julius Caesar in 45 B.C.

What does the leap year mean according to the Julian calendar?

The Julian calendar believes that the year is made up of 365 days and 6 hours. These additional 6 hours add up to one whole day every four years, accounting for an extra day in February in the leap year. The leap year was a concept first introduced in the Julian calendar itself.

Does Christianity follow the Julian calendar?

Many orthodox churches, including some branches of the Catholic Church, use the Julian calendar to celebrate religious events and festivals such as Christmas, Black Friday, Easter, etc.

Which countries still use the Julian calendar?

No nationality still uses the Julian calendar, however, communities like the Orthodox Church of Russia and the Berber people of North Africa continue to use this method of identifying the passage of time.

How to read the Julian date?

The Julian date is read in continuous numbers from the beginning of the Julian period instead of dividing it into dates and months. 

Is the Julian date used in science?

The Julian date is used by historians and astronomers to correctly identify the precise time spans during which a pre-historical event occurred or following which cycles of distant astronomical bodies can be calculated.

What Julian date is today?