Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Julian day
Julian day is used in the Julian date (JD) system of time measurement for scientific use by the astronomy
community. Julian date is recommended for astronomical use by the International Astronomical Union.
Julian Date
Historical Julian dates were recorded relative to GMT or Ephemeris Time, but the International Astronomical Union
now recommends that Julian Dates be specified in Terrestrial Time, and that when necessary to specify Julian Dates
using a different time scale, that the time scale used be indicated when required, such as JD(UT1). The fraction of
the day is found by converting the number of hours, minutes, and seconds after noon into the equivalent decimal
fraction.
The term Julian date is also used to refer to:
• Julian calendar dates
• ordinal dates (day-of-year)
The use of Julian date to refer to the day-of-year (ordinal date) is usually considered to be incorrect although it is
widely used that way in the earth sciences and computer programming.
The Julian date (JD) is the interval of time in days and fractions of a day since January 1, 4713 BC Greenwich
noon, Julian proleptic calendar.[1] In precise work, the timescale, e.g., Terrestrial Time (TT) or Universal Time (UT),
should be specified.[2]
The Julian day number (JDN)[3] is the integer part of the Julian date (JD).[2] The day commencing at the
above-mentioned epoch is JDN 0. Negative values can be used for preceding dates, though they predate all recorded
history. Now, at , , (UTC) the Julian day number is unknown operator: u'strong'.
A Julian date of 2454115.05486 means that the date and Universal Time is Sunday January 14, 2007 at 13:18:59.9.
The decimal parts of a Julian date:
0.1 = 2.4 hours or 144 minutes or 8640 seconds
0.01 = 0.24 hours or 14.4 minutes or 864 seconds
0.001 = 0.024 hours or 1.44 minutes or 86.4 seconds
0.0001 = 0.0024 hours or 0.144 minutes or 8.64 seconds
0.00001 = 0.00024 hours or 0.0144 minutes or 0.864 seconds.
Almost 2.5 million Julian days have elapsed since the initial epoch. JDN 2,400,000 was November 16, 1858. JD
2,500,000.0 will occur on August 31, 2132 at noon UT.
If the Julian date of noon is applied to the entire midnight-to-midnight civil day centered on that noon,[4] rounding
Julian dates (fractional days) for the twelve hours before noon up while rounding those after noon down, then the
remainder upon division by 7 represents the day of the week, with 0 representing Monday, 1 representing Tuesday,
and so forth. Now at , , (UTC) the nearest noon JDN is unknown operator: u'strong' yielding a remainder of
unknown operator: u'strong'.
The Julian day number can be considered a very simple calendar, where its calendar date is just an integer. This is
useful for reference, computations, and conversions. It allows the time between any two dates in history to be
computed by simple subtraction.
The Julian day system was introduced by astronomers to provide a single system of dates that could be used when
working with different calendars and to unify different historical chronologies. Apart from the choice of the zero
point and name, this Julian day and Julian date are not directly related to the Julian calendar, although it is possible
to convert any date from one calendar to the other.
Julian day 2
Alternatives
Because the starting point or reference epoch is so long ago, numbers in the Julian day can be quite large and
cumbersome. A more recent starting point is sometimes used, for instance by dropping the leading digits, in order to
fit into limited computer memory with an adequate amount of precision. In the following table, times are given in 24
hour notation.
Julian Day Number 12:00 January 1, 4713 JDN = floor (JD) unknown The day of the epoch is JDN 0. Changes at noon UT
(JDN) BC, Monday operator: u'strong' or TT. (JDN 0 = November 24, 4714 BC, Gregorian
proleptic.)
Reduced Julian Day 12:00 November 16, RJD = JD − 2400000 unknown Used by astronomers
(RJD) 1858, Tuesday operator: u'strong'
Modified Julian Day 00:00 November 17, MJD = JD − unknown Introduced by SAO in 1957, Note that it starts from
(MJD) 1858, Wednesday 2400000.5 operator: u'strong' midnight rather than noon.
Truncated Julian 00:00 May 24, 1968, TJD = JD − 2440000.5 unknown - Definition as introduced by NASA[5]
Day (TJD) Friday TJD = (JD − 0.5) mod operator: u'strong' - NIST definition
00:00 November 10, 10000 unknown
1995, Tuesday operator: u'strong'
Dublin Julian Day 12:00 December 31, DJD = JD − 2415020 unknown Introduced by the IAU in 1955
(DJD) 1899, Sunday operator: u'strong'
Chronological Julian 00:00 January 1, 4713 CJD = JD + 0.5 + time unknown Specific to time zone; Changes at midnight zone
Day (CJD) BC, Monday zone adjustment operator: u'strong' time; UT CJD given
(UT)
Lilian Day Number October 15, 1582, floor (JD - 2299160.5) unknown The count of days of the Gregorian calendar for
Friday (as Day 1) operator: u'strong' Lilian date reckoned in Universal time.
ANSI Date January 1, 1601, floor (JD − unknown The origin of COBOL integer dates
Monday (as Day 1) 2305812.5) operator: u'strong'
Rata Die January 1, 1, Monday floor (JD − unknown The count of days of the Common Era (Gregorian)
(as Day 1) 1721424.5) operator: u'strong'
Unix Time January 1, 1970, (JD − 2440587.5) × unknown Counts by the second, not the day
Thursday 86400 operator: u'strong'
• The Modified Julian Day is found by rounding downward. The MJD was introduced by the Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory in 1957 to record the orbit of Sputnik via an IBM 704 (36-bit machine) and using only
18 bits until August 7, 2576. MJD is the epoch of OpenVMS, using 63-bit date/time postponing the next Y2K
campaign to July 31, 31086 02:48:05.47.[6]
• The Dublin Julian Day (DJD) is the number of days that has elapsed since the epoch of the solar and lunar
ephemerides used from 1900 through 1983, Newcomb's Tables of the Sun and Ernest W. Brown's Tables of the
Motion of the Moon (1919). This epoch was noon UT on January 0, 1900, which is the same as noon UT on
December 31, 1899. The DJD was defined by the International Astronomical Union at their 1955 meeting in
Dublin, Ireland.[7]
• The Chronological Julian Day was recently proposed by Peter Meyer[8] [9] and has been used by some students
of the calendar and in some scientific software packages.[10]
• The Lilian day number is a count of days of the Gregorian calendar and not defined relative to the Julian Date. It
is an integer applied to a whole day; day 1 was October 15, 1582, which was the day the Gregorian calendar went
into effect. The original paper defining it makes no mention of the time zone, and no mention of time-of-day.[11]
Julian day 3
It was named for Aloysius Lilius, the principal author of the Gregorian calendar.
• The ANSI Date defines January 1, 1601 as day 1, and is used as the origin of COBOL integer dates. This epoch is
the beginning of the previous 400-year cycle of leap years in the Gregorian calendar, which ended with the year
2000.
• Rata Die is a system (or more precisely a family of three systems) used in the book Calendrical Calculations. It
uses the local timezone, and day 1 is January 1, 1, that is, the first day of the Christian or Common Era in the
proleptic Gregorian calendar.
The Heliocentric Julian Day (HJD) is the same as the Julian day, but adjusted to the frame of reference of the Sun,
and thus can differ from the Julian day by as much as 8.3 minutes, that being the time it takes the Sun's light to reach
Earth. As two separate astronomical measurements can exist that were taken when the Earth, astronomical objects,
and Sun are in a straight line but the Earth was actually on opposite sides of the Sun for the two measurements, that
is at one roughly 500 light seconds nearer to the astronomical than the Sun for the first measure, then 500 light
seconds further from the astronomical object than the Sun for the second measure, then the subsequent light time
error between two Julian Day measures can amount to nearly as much as 1000 seconds different relative to the same
Heliocentric Julian Day interval which can make a significant difference when measuring temporal phenomena for
short period astronomical objects over long time intervals. The Julian day is sometimes referred to as the Geocentric
Julian Day (GJD) in order to distinguish it from HJD.
History
The Julian day number is based on the Julian Period proposed by Joseph Scaliger in 1583, at the time of the
Gregorian calendar reform, but it is the multiple of three calendar cycles used with the Julian calendar:
15 (indiction cycle) × 19 (Metonic cycle) × 28 (Solar cycle) = 7980 years
Its epoch falls at the last time when all three cycles (if they are continued backward far enough) were in their first
year together — Scaliger chose this because it preceded all historical dates.
Note: although many references say that the Julian in "Julian day" refers to Scaliger's father, Julius Scaliger, in the
introduction to Book V of his Opus de Emendatione Temporum ("Work on the Emendation of Time") he states,
"Iulianum vocavimus: quia ad annum Iulianum dumtaxat accomodata est", which translates more or less as "We
have called it Julian merely because it is accommodated to the Julian year." This Julian refers to Julius Caesar, who
introduced the Julian calendar in 46 BC.
In his book Outlines of Astronomy, first published in 1849, the astronomer John Herschel wrote:
The first year of the current Julian period, or that of which the number in each of the three subordinate
cycles is 1, was the year 4713 B.C., and the noon of the 1st of January of that year, for the meridian of
Alexandria, is the chronological epoch, to which all historical eras are most readily and intelligibly
referred, by computing the number of integer days intervening between that epoch and the noon (for
Alexandria) of the day, which is reckoned to be the first of the particular era in question. The meridian
of Alexandria is chosen as that to which Ptolemy refers the commencement of the era of Nabonassar, the
basis of all his calculations.
Astronomers adopted Herschel's Julian Days in the late nineteenth century, but used the meridian of Greenwich
instead of Alexandria, after the former was adopted as the Prime Meridian after the International Meridian
Conference in Washington in 1884. This has now become the standard system of Julian days. Julian days are
typically used by astronomers to date astronomical observations, thus eliminating the complications resulting from
using standard calendar periods like eras, years, or months. They were first introduced into variable star work by
Edward Charles Pickering, of the Harvard College Observatory, in 1890.[12]
Julian days begin at noon because when Herschel recommended them, the astronomical day began at noon (it did so
until 1925). The astronomical day had begun at noon ever since Ptolemy chose to begin the days in his astronomical
Julian day 4
periods at noon. He chose noon because the transit of the Sun across the observer's meridian occurs at the same
apparent time every day of the year, unlike sunrise or sunset, which vary by several hours. Midnight was not even
considered because it could not be accurately determined using water clocks. Nevertheless, he double-dated most
nighttime observations with both Egyptian days beginning at sunrise and Babylonian days beginning at sunset. This
would seem to imply that his choice of noon was not, as is sometimes stated, made in order to allow all observations
from a given night to be recorded with the same date.
Calculation
The Julian day number can be calculated using the following formulas (integer division is used exclusively, that is,
the remainder of all divisions are dropped):
The months (M) January to December are 1 to 12. For the year (Y) astronomical year numbering is used, thus 1 BC
is 0, 2 BC is −1, and 4713 BC is −4712. D is the day of the month. JDN is the Julian Day Number, which pertains to
the noon occurring in the corresponding calendar date.
then compute:
Finding Julian date given Julian Day Number and time of day
For the full Julian date, not counting leap seconds (divisions are real numbers):
JDN mod 7 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Day of the week Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
Julian day 5
• let m = (da × 5 + 308) div 153 − 2; (note: this is the integer number of full months elapsed since the last
March 1 at 00:00 UTC);
• let d = da − (m + 4) × 153 div 5 + 122; (note: this is the number of days elapsed since day 1 of the month at
00:00 UTC, including fractions of one day);
• let Y = y − 4800 + (m + 2) div 12; let M = (m + 2) mod 12 + 1; let D = d + 1;
return astronomical Gregorian date (Y, M, D).
The operations div and mod used here are intended to have the same binary operator priority as the multipication
and division, and defined as:
You can also use only integers in most of the formula above, by taking J = floor(JD + 0.5), to compute the three
integers (Y, M, D).
The time of the day is then computed from the fractional day T = frac(JD + 0.5). The additive 0.5 constant can also
be adjusted to take the local timezone into account, when computing a astronomical Gregorian date localized in
another timezone than UTC. To convert the fractional day into actual hours, minutes, seconds, the astronomical
Gregorian calendar uses a constant length of 24 hours per day (i.e. 86400 seconds exactly), ignoring leap seconds
inserted or deleted at end of some specific days in the UTC Gregorian calendar. If you want to convert it to actual
UTC time, you will need to compensate the UTC leap seconds by adding them to J before restarting the computation
(however this adjustment requires a lookup table, because leap seconds are not predictable with a simple formula);
you'll also need to finally determine which of the two possible UTC date and time is used at times where leap
seconds are added (no final compensation will be needed if negative leap seconds are occurring on the rare possible
days that could be shorter than 24 hours).
See also
• Julian year (astronomy)
• Julian year (calendar)
• Decimal time
• Epoch (reference date)
• Epoch (astronomy)
• Era
• Time
• Time scales
• Ordinal date
• Dual dating
• 5th millennium BC
• Lunation Number (similar concept)
Footnotes
[1] This equals November 24, 4714 BC in the proleptic Gregorian calendar.
[2] The Astronomical Almanac Online 2008 (http:/ / asa. usno. navy. mil/ SecM/ Glossary. html), Glossary s. v. Julian date
[3] Information Bulletin No. 81 (http:/ / www. iau. org/ static/ publications/ IB81. pdf). (January 1998), p. 23.
[4] Nachum Dershowitz and Edward M. Reingold 2008. See its applet Calendrica (http:/ / emr. cs. iit. edu/ home/ reingold/ calendar-book/
Calendrica. html).
[5] Noerdlinger, 1995.
[6] Worsham 1988
[7] Ransom c. 1988
[8] Peter Meyer.(2004). Message Concerning Chronological Julian Days/Dates. (http:/ / www. hermetic. ch/ cal_stud/ cjd. htm) author.
[9] Peter Meyer. (n.d.). Chronological Julian Date. (http:/ / www. hermetic. ch/ cal_stud/ chron_jdate. htm) author. Retrieved February 8, 2009.
[10] Michael L. Hall. (January 20, 2010). The CÆSAR Code Package (http:/ / www. lanl. gov/ Caesar/ Caesar. html) (LA-UR-00-5568,
LA-CC-06-027). Los Alamos National Laboratory. In this software the definition has been changed from a real number to an integer.
[11] Ohms 1986
[12] Furness (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=5jQJAAAAIAAJ& printsec=toc#PPA206,M1) 1988, p. 206.
[13] Tøndering, Claus. "Frequently Asked Questions about Calendars" (http:/ / www. tondering. dk/ claus/ cal/ node3.
html#SECTION003161000000000000000). .
[14] Schlyter, Paul. "Computing planetary positions" (http:/ / stjarnhimlen. se/ comp/ tutorial. html). .
References
• Astronomical Almanac Online (http://asa.usno.navy.mil/). (2008). U.S. Nautical Almanac Office and Her
Majesty's Nautical Almanac Office.
• Furness, C. E. (1915). An introduction to the study of variable stars. (http://books.google.com/
books?id=5jQJAAAAIAAJ&printsec=toc#PPA206,M1) Boston: Houghton-Mifflin. Vassar Semi-Centennial
Series.
• Information Bulletin No. 81 (http://www.iau.org/static/publications/IB81.pdf). (January 1998). International
Astronomical Union.
• Moyer, Gordon. (April 1981). "The Origin of the Julian Day System," Sky and Telescope 61 311−313.
• Noerdlinger, P. (April 1995 revised May 1996). Metadata Issues in the EOSDIS Science Data Processing Tools
for Time Transformations and Geolocation. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
• Ohms, B. G. (1986). Computer processing of dates outside the twentieth century (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/
xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=5387720). IBM Systems Journal 25, 244–251.
• Ransom, D. H. Jr. (c. 1988) ASTROCLK Astronomical Clock and Celestial Tracking Program pages 69–143
(http://textfiles.meulie.net/computers/DOCUMENTATION/astroclk.dc2), "Dates and the Gregorian
calendar" pages 106–111. Retrieved September 10, 2009.
Julian day 8
External links
• Julian day calculation by IMCCE at Paris Observatory (http://www.imcce.fr/en/grandpublic/temps/
jour_julien.php) ± Julian days with 16 significant digits (integer plus fraction)
• U.S. Naval Observatory Julian Date Converter (http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/astronomical-applications/
data-services/jul-date) no negative Julian days, max year 9999
• Julian Day and Civil Date calculator (http://www.nr.com/julian.html)
• U.S. Naval Observatory Time Service article on Modified Julian Date (http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/mjd.html)
• U.S. Naval Observatory current MJD service (http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/cgi-bin/daterdnm.sh)
• Outlines of Astronomy by John Herschel, 1849 (http://books.google.com/books?id=TD0CAAAAYAAJ&
pg=PA595) Table of Julian days for remarkable eras
• International Astronomical Union Resolution 1B: On the Use of Julian Dates (http://www.iers.org/nn_10910/
IERS/EN/Science/Recommendations/resolutionB1.html?__nnn=true)
• Calendrica (http://emr.cs.iit.edu/home/reingold/calendar-book/Calendrica.html)
• BASIC Programs from Sky & Telescope (http://www.skyandtelescope.com/resources/software/3304911.
html) with CALJD.BAS (http://media.skyandtelescope.com/binary/caljd.bas) and JDCAL.BAS (http://
media.skyandtelescope.com/binary/jdcal.bas), very small BASIC programs to convert Julian Day numbers.
published in the May 1984 issue.
Article Sources and Contributors 9
License
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
http:/ / creativecommons. org/ licenses/ by-sa/ 3. 0/