[meteorite-list] AD. Japan Meteorite Falls/Finds/Hammerspageupdated with more than 50 links

[Rob Wesel]

OK, so +/- 6 days then.

Just busting chops Sterling, your posts are always amazingly insightful, 
thanks for that.

You and Bernd...juggernauts...or robots...need to run some tests.

Rob Wesel
http://www.nakhladogmeteorites.com
------------------
We are the music makers...
and we are the dreamers of the dreams.
Willy Wonka, 1971



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Cc: "drtanuki" <drtanuki at yahoo.com>; "Rob Wesel" 
<rob at nakhladogmeteorites.com>
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2007 4:59 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] AD. Japan Meteorite 
Falls/Finds/Hammerspageupdated with more than 50 links



> Hi, Rob, List,

>

>    You couldn't have found a nicer mess to land in: calendars!

>

>    Simple answers first: if a source specifies "Julian calendar"

> for the date of an event, it almost certainly means the event's date

> in the Julian calendar system, proposed and enforced by Augustus,

> Julius Caesar's adopted son and first Emperor of Rome.

>

>    By the time Pope Gregory XIII decided the calendarical slide had

> gone far enough, the Julian calendar of 1700 and the astronomical

> calendar were 11 days apart, by the 1800's when Protestant Europe

> adopted the "Gregorian" calendar, it was 12 days off. By 1917, when

> revolutionary Russians changed their calendars, it was 13 days. The

> Julian lags by one day every 143 years (since Year 1 AD).

>

>    So, an event in 861 is off (behind) by about 6.021 days, or

> in practical terms 6 days. But it's messier than that. For example,

> when does a year begin? Jan. 1? No, not for most of the past

> two millennia. Do climate scientists who evaluate temperature

> records from the past centuries for proof of global warming

> actually know what day of the year is meant in the records?

> (The answer to that one is no.) Were calendars, at a given time,

> the same in all countries? No.

>

> JULIAN CALENDAR

>

>    The Roman calendar began the year on 1 January, and this remained

> the start of the year after the Julian reform. However, even after local

> calendars were aligned to the Julian calendar, they started the new year

> on different dates. The Alexandrian calendar in Egypt started on 29

> August (30 August after an Alexandrian leap year). Several local

> provincial calendars were aligned to start on the birthday of Augustus,

> 23 September. The indiction caused the Byzantine year, which used

> the Julian calendar, to begin on 1 September; this date is still used in

> the Eastern Orthodox Church for the beginning of the liturgical year.

> When the Julian calendar was adopted in Russia in AD 988 by

> Vladimir I of Kiev, the year was numbered Anno Mundi 6496,

> beginning on 1 March, six months after the start of the Byzantine

> Anno Mundi year with the same number. In 1492 (AM 7000),

> Ivan III, according to church tradition, realigned the start of the

> year to 1 September, so that AM 7000 only lasted for six months

> in Russia, from 1 March to 31 August 1492.

>

>    During the Middle Ages 1 January retained the name New Year's

> Day (or an equivalent name) in all Western European countries

> (affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church), since the medieval

> calendar continued to display the months from January to December

> (in twelve columns containing 28 to 31 days each), just as the

> Romans had. However, most of those countries began their

> numbered year on 25 December (the Nativity of Jesus), 25 March

> (the Incarnation of Jesus), or even Easter, as in France.

>

>    In England before 1752, 1 January was celebrated as the

> New Year festival, but the "year starting 25th March was

> called the Civil or Legal Year, although the phrase Old Style

> was more commonly used." To reduce misunderstandings

> on the date, it was not uncommon in parish registers for a

> new year heading after 24 March for example 1661 had

> another heading at the end of the following December

> indicating "1661/62". This was to explain to the reader

> that the year was 1661 Old Style and 1662 New Style.

>

>    Most Western European countries shifted the first day of

> their numbered year to 1 January while they were still using

> the Julian calendar, before they adopted the Gregorian calendar,

> many during the sixteenth century. The following table shows

> the years in which various countries adopted 1 January as the

> start of the year. Eastern European countries, with populations

> showing allegiance to the Orthodox Church, began the year on

> 1 September from about 988.

>

>    Note that as a consequence of change of New Year,

> 1 January 1751 to 24 March 1751 are non-existent dates

> in England.

>

>    The Julian calendar was in general use in Europe and Northern

> Africa from the times of the Roman Empire until 1582, when

> Pope Gregory XIII promulgated the Gregorian Calendar.

> Reform was required because too many leap days are added

> with respect to the astronomical seasons on the Julian scheme.

> On average, the astronomical solstices and the equinoxes

> advance by about 11 minutes per year against the Julian year.

> As a result, the calculated date of Easter gradually moved out

> of phase with the moon. While Hipparchus and presumably

> Sosigenes were aware of the discrepancy, although not of its

> correct value, it was evidently felt to be of little importance at

> the time of the Julian reform. However, it accumulated significantly

> over time: the Julian calendar gained a day about every 134 years.

> By 1582, it was ten days out of alignment.

>

>    The Gregorian Calendar was soon adopted by most Catholic

> countries (e.g. Spain, Portugal, Poland, most of Italy). Protestant

> countries followed later, and the countries of Eastern Europe

> even later. In the British Empire (including the American colonies),

> Wednesday 2 September 1752 was followed by Thursday

> 14 September 1752. For 12 years from 1700 Sweden used a

> modified Julian Calendar, and adopted the Gregorian calendar

> in 1753, but Russia remained on the Julian calendar until 1917,

> after the Russian Revolution (which is thus called the 'October

> Revolution' though it occurred in Gregorian November), while

> Greece continued to use it until 1923. During this time the Julian

> calendar continued to diverge from the Gregorian. In 1700 the

> difference became 11 days; in 1800, 12; and in 1900, 13, where

> it will stay till 2100.

>

>    Although all Eastern Orthodox countries (most of them in Eastern

> or Southeastern Europe) had adopted the Gregorian calendar by

> 1927, their national churches had not. A revised Julian calendar

> was proposed during a synod in Constantinople in May 1923,

> consisting of a solar part which was and will be identical to the

> Gregorian calendar until the year 2800, and a lunar part which

> calculated Easter astronomically at Jerusalem. All Orthodox

> churches refused to accept the lunar part, so almost all Orthodox

> churches continue to celebrate Easter according to the Julian

> calendar (the Finnish Orthodox Church uses the Gregorian Easter).

>

>    The solar part of the revised Julian calendar was accepted by

> only some Orthodox churches. Those that did accept it, with

> hope for improved dialogue and negotiations with the Western

> denominations, were the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople,

> the Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, the Orthodox Churches

> of Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Poland, Bulgaria (the last in 1963),

> and the Orthodox Church in America (although some OCA parishes

> are permitted to use the Julian calendar). Thus these churches

> celebrate the Nativity on the same day that Western Christians do,

> 25 December Gregorian until 2800. The Orthodox Churches of

> Jerusalem, Russia, Macedonia, Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and the

> Greek Old Calendarists continue to use the Julian calendar for their

> fixed dates, thus they celebrate the Nativity on 25 December Julian

> (which is 7 January Gregorian until 2100).

>

>

>    And...

>

>    Here's a further deeper sample of calendrical complexity (largely

> caged from Duncan Steel's book "Marking Time").

>

>    Some examples: Should one use local solar time, local mean

> solar time, or standard time?  (Prior to the International Meridian

> Conference in 1884, the records of that meeting indicate that only

> four nations followed standard time systems: the UK, the USA

> and Canada - but only just for those two, from the year before.

> The Netherlands did not become part of the international standard

> time system until 1954, for example.

>

>    With the leap year scheme used in the Western calendar the

> time of the vernal equinox ranges over 53 hours within 19-21 March,

> producing a corresponding variation in the solar longitudes at which

> January, or any other month, occurs.

>

>    It has been assumed for a long time that the seasonal year follows

> the spacing between the equinoxes and solstices, the *average* such time

> being the familiar *tropical year* of 365.2422 days when again averaged 

> over

> some dozens of orbits.  This assumption seems to be wrong.  The

> cycle time of the seasons over the past several centuries (since 

> temperature

> records began) is actually the anomalistic year, the time between 

> perihelion

> passages, which is near 365.2596 days again when suitably averaged.

> Because perihelion passage shifts later by about one day every 58 years

> on the Western calendar, this would imply that not only does 'January'

> oscillate by 53 hours in the leap year cycle, but also the current (2002)

> January is shifted, seasonally-speaking, by more than two days compared

> to 'January' back in 1867.

>

>    Apart from anything else, if one kept a calendar held steady

> against the perihelion position (and hence the seasonal cycle *at

> present* - I would anticipate that this cyclicity is only temporary for

> some centuries until perihelion moves far enough away from the winter

> solstice to lose the resonance) then the 24-hour period labelled 'January

> 31st (Eastern Standard Time)' would in the past have been in February.

>

>    This all comes back to the calendar one uses.  I have employed the

> term 'Western calendar', It is a fallacy that the calendar used as the

> world-wide standard (with local or religious calendars also employed)

> is the 'Gregorian calendar.' That is an ecclesiastical calendar adopted

> by-and-large only in various Catholic states around 1582-1610,

> persisting since in Italy and Spain.  Elsewhere solar calendars have

> been legally adopted (by other countries) in which the same

> (inaccurate) leap year rule as the Gregorian happens to be used.

> The Western calendar derives basically through the major powers:

> Britain's calendar reform of 1751, which was inherited by the

> American colonies and thence by the initial founding states of the

> USA (note that the USA does not have any legal calendar code of its own,

> the familiar system is just used by common assent there and hence

> elsewhere).  It is this which may be termed the 'Western calendar'.

>

>    But that does not make the Western calendar the same as the Gregorian.

> There are several very significant differences.  The Gregorian is a

> luni-solar calendar in that it provides for a lunar cycle as well as

> a solar sycle.  Everyone knows about the leap-year corrections (three

> in 400 are dropped: 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100...) but few know also of

> the lunar jumps: the lunar phase (the phase of the ecclesiastical moon,

> not the real moon) is assumed to follow the Metonic cycle of 19 years

> which is close to 235 lunations, except that over a period of 2500 years

> there are eight single-day jumps interposed.  This is done to 'regularize'

> the date of Easter, the main aim of the Gregorian reform.  The Gregorian

> is a luni-solar religious calendar, whereas the Western is a solar civil

> calendar.  They are not the same thing.

>

>    That is not to say that Lord Chesterfield's Act of 1751 did not address

> religious matters.  It had to, because Great Britain (as it was then)

> is a religion-based nation.  The monarch is the 'Defender of the Faith.'

> In this connection the Act contains several mistakes.  For anti-Catholic

> and anti-Semitic reasons the phraseology employed (oft-quoted by people in

> some form : "Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after 

> the

> equinox") is nonsensical in itself, and does not lead to the Easter dates

> actually printed in the Book of Common Prayer, the tables there following

> the Catholic rules.  The statement cited there would imply that Easter

> cannot coincide with either an astronomical full moon or the Passover,

> whereas such coincidences do occur.  I might note that the first person

> to have spelled out this nonsense, in about 1850, seems to have been

> Augustus De Morgan, one-time Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society.

>

>    On top of that - and this is significant - the Act mentions the desire

> to

> keep the solstices and equinox at the same seasonal dates.  Leaving aside

> the recently-recognized fact that the seasons follow the anomalistic year,

> the implied necessary year-length for the calendar (the Western) as 

> defined

> by that Act is the *tropical year* of 365.2422 days (on average, etc.).

> The 'Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac' (an official

> publication of the US & UK governments) actually mis-defines the tropical

> year as the time between vernal equinoxes, and it is NOT.  Because of the

> eccentricity of our orbit four different-length years result from the

> times between vernal and autumnal equinoxes, and winter and summer

> solstices.  The Gregorian reform was based upon regularizing Easter and

> thus keeping the date of the vernal equinox near-constant (which it fails 

> to

> do; note the 53-hour range mentioned earlier), meaning that the year

> counted between those equinoxes is what is needed.  This is 365.2424 days

> at present.

>

>    This provides another reason why the Gregorian and Western calendars

> are not the same thing: their target year lengths are different.  That

> difference in the fourth decimal place is significant.  The mean

> Gregorian year of 365.2425 days is much closer to the Vernal Equinox

> year of 365.2424 days than the tropical year of 365.2422 days, as used

> in the Western calendar. Arguments over whether we need a 'correction'

> every 3200 or 4000 years, begun by astronomer John Herschel in 1828,

> are thus specious (and apart from anything else, tidal drag is

> lengthening the day as defined astronomically as opposed to

> atomically). The Catholic Church in the later sixteenth century would

> have produced a 'better' calendar if it had instead used a 33-year

> cycle containing eight leap years, as does the Persian calendar.  This

> (i) Makes a year 365.242424... days long on average; (ii) Makes a cycle

> short enough to keep the equinox within a 24-hour range; (iii) Leads to

> a better solution of the lunar phase problem connected with Easter.

>

>    There is more.  The Eastern Orthodox Churches have suffered splits

> since in 1923 it was suggested that they alter from the Julian calendar

> to what has been called the 'Revised Julian'.  This would have seven

> leap year days dropped from nine centuries, such that the year would

> average to 365.242222... days.  This was to provide one-upmanship over

> the Gregorian scheme, but it is based on the mistaken belief that the

> *tropical year* rather than the *vernal equinox year* is the target.

> There are still arguments within those Churches on this topic, mostly

> based on a totally incorrect understanding of the astronomy.

>

>    But this brings me full circle.  So far as I am aware the only one of

> the Orthodox Churches to have adopted the Gregorian calendar is that of

> Finland. Thus it is true that the Gregorian calendar is used in

> Finland: within the Orthodox Church, and the Catholic Church.  As for

> the rest of the country, that is a different matter.  One would need to

> look at the Swedish legislation to see whether they adopted the

> Gregorian calendar, in a legal act dated (I would imagine) 1752, the

> year before the actual reform took place, although I am not sure

> whether Sweden was using the March 25th New Year as was Britain until

> 31st December 1751.  I would imagine that the Lutherans of Sweden, like

> the Anglicans of Britain, would have written an Act which did not

> mention the Catholic Church/Pope etc., but rather defined a parallel

> solar calendar with some definition for when Easter is to be

> celebrated.  Perhaps they made the same silly (and

> religiously-motivated) mistakes as did the British.

>

>    It is very easy to make glib statements like "We use the Gregorian

> calendar" without realizing what is actually involved.  For example,

> making January 1st the New Year's Day is often ascribed to the Gregorian

> reform, but that is a false belief.  It was already in use before that.

> Off and on it has been used since at least 153 BC.  Similarly we use

> calendar months which have been unaltered since 45 BC, notwithstanding

> claims that Augustus Caesar fiddled with them.  Thus the months, as such,

> are not defined as part of the Gregorian calendar.

>

>    Our year numbers are ordinals, not cardinals. Notwithstanding the fact

> that we count a 'zeroth law of thermodynamics', and a 'zeroth'

> Pharaonic dynasty in Egypt, it makes little sense to have a 'zeroth

> year'. AD 1 is 'the first year of the Lord'.  (1 BC is the 'first year

> Before Christ', a seventeenth-century invention by an astronomer, by

> the way.) One may wonder how AD 1 can be 'the first year of the Lord'

> if he was born on December 25th (I am talking here about *traditional*

> dates rather than historically-veracious dates).  When Dionysius

> Exiguus was setting up his framework for Easter dates in 525-253 (he

> was not trying to define an era) he correctly recognized that a Jewish

> boy's life is reckoned from his circumcision, not from birth.  Thus

> Dionysius equated 1st January (in the year which two centuries later

> became labelled AD 1) as the date of the circumcision, it being the

> start of the year. (Look into a Church Missal and you will find January

> 1st named as the Feast of the Circumcision, and our method of counting

> years from that date is technically referred to as the *Stylo

> Circumcisionis*.) Circumcision occurs on the eighth day counting

> exclusively (see your Bible), putting the traditional Nativity on 25th

> December 1 BC, which was the traditional (but not actual, even then)

> date of the winter solstice festivities. (The early Church had actually

> used January 6th, Epiphany, to avoid the pagan solstice celebrations.)

> Dionysius then counted back the nine month gestation period to the

> traditional (but not actual) vernal equinox of March 25th in 1 BC, and

> he counted years from there as the *Anni ab Incarnatione*. This is the

> year which astronomers call 0 (using cardinals) but is more generally

> termed 1 BC (using ordinals).  The fact that March 25th was the

> Incarnation/Annunciation/Lady Day was what led to the British and

> eventually American colonies using that date for New Year, although

> counted FROM THE WRONG YEAR! (AD 1 instead of 1 BC).

>

>    I hope that the above is both of interest and illuminating.  A final

> note for readers in the USA. Although you now use the Western calendar,

> and previous to 1752 the Julian was used in the Atlantic colonies, do

> not imagine that no use has ever been made of other systems.  When the

> first Catholic missionaries arrived, they imposed the Gregorian

> calendar. Thus when (say) Texas and California joined the USA, although

> their dating systems may have been continuous they did move from the

> Gregorian to the Western calendar. Those parts in the Louisiana

> Purchase were on the Gregorian until they were administered for three

> weeks under the French Revolutionary Calendar in late 1803, before

> Napoleon sold the region to the USA.  That's something to note next

> time you eat Lobster Thermidor in New Orleans.

>

>    Until Alaska was sold in 1868 to the USA it was part of the Russian

> Empire, and thus on the Julian calendar.  But it is more confusing than

> that.

> The day of the week there was different to that throughout the rest of 

> North

> America. Although a change from Julian to Western (or Gregorian)

> calendar did not involve a change in the day of week sequence

> elsewhere, in Alaska it did because that region, in the absence of any

> International Date Line, used both the date and the day of the week

> appropriate for Moscow.

>

> [Deep breath]

>

>

>

> Sterling K. Webb

> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

> ----- Original Message ----- 

> From: "Rob Wesel" <rob at nakhladogmeteorites.com>

> To: "drtanuki" <drtanuki at yahoo.com>; <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>

> Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2007 5:34 PM

> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] AD. Japan Meteorite

> Falls/Finds/Hammerspageupdated with more than 50 links

>

>

> I was just going over it Dirk, very cool

>

> Of  note

>

> Nogata fell in the year 861 as you stated

> Look how well preserved this piece is 1146 years of curation

>

> I checked all sources and they confirm 861 as the fall date, some mention

> "Julian Calendar" in that date.

> As I can not find a plausible conversion of Julian 861 to Gregorian date

> (all converters lead me to a negative year) is this to mean that Julian

> dating was used to calculate the Gregorian date of 861?

>

> Damn that's old, predates them all and looks fresher than Mali

>

>

> Rob Wesel

> http://www.nakhladogmeteorites.com

> ------------------

> We are the music makers...

> and we are the dreamers of the dreams.

> Willy Wonka, 1971

>

>

>

> ----- Original Message ----- 

> From: "drtanuki" <drtanuki at yahoo.com>

> To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>

> Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2007 3:07 PM

> Subject: [meteorite-list] AD. Japan Meteorite Falls/Finds/Hammers

> pageupdated with more than 50 links

>

>

>> Hi to all that are interested in Japanese meteorites I

>> have added more than 50 new links and four photos

>> (thanks to Paolo Gallo, Christian Anger, and Martin

>> Horesji).  I hope that you find the webpage of

>> interest and use.  Thank you.

>>

>> http://meteoritesjapan.com/japmets.aspx

>>

>>

>> Best Regards, Dirk Ross...Tokyo

>>

>> www.meteoritesjapan.com

>>

>

>