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From: rwl@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU (Ray Lubinsky)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Julian Date/Day Number
Message-ID: <2081@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU>
Date: Thu, 12-Nov-87 13:15:00 EST
Article-I.D.: uvacs.2081
Posted: Thu Nov 12 13:15:00 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 15-Nov-87 09:09:04 EST
References: <557@astroatc.UUCP>
Organization: U.Va. CS Department, Charlottesville, VA
Lines: 19
Keywords: Ceasar, Astronomy, Dates, Etc.

In article <557@astroatc.UUCP>, philm@astroatc.UUCP (Phil Mason) writes:
:
> A Julian Date (or Day Number) is the number of days since an event in Roman 
> history.  Julius Ceasar, in addition to being a great military leader, was 
> also a great calendar maker.  The Julian Date was a marker of a new era, 

As I mention in <2078@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU>, the Julian period is based on an
essentially arbitrary date and has no relation whatsoever to the calendar of
Julius Caesar (other than the fact that the solar year was taken to be 365.25
mean solar days).

Where do people come up with these ``facts''?  (I got mine from the
Encyclopedia Britannica and the Astronomical Almanac for 1987.)

-- 
| Ray Lubinsky         Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia |
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