Most of us know today as a rather unimportant day, as days go, with the rather unimportant number of December 8th. However if you're familiar with a timekeeping method used in many astronomy fields, then you'll know that from 12:00 today to 12:00 tomorrow is the julian date 2,457,000.
First, a brief history. The Julian date is a count of the days that have passed since January 1st, 4713 BC. It is used in timekeeping for astronomy to count individual days since that date, and in the case that I most often see, to provide epochs for minor planets' orbits. Today, exactly 2,457,000 days have passed since the count was started. 2456000 was March 14th, 2012 and 2458000 will be on September 4th, 2017.
So, happy JD 2457000!
No comments:
Post a Comment