"Leap February" in the year of the Rabbit in the Guimao lunar calendar, with a total of 384 days
CTOnews.com, January 1, 2022 has passed, and today is the first day of 2023. According to astronomical science experts, the Gregorian calendar 2023 is a normal year, with 28 days in February and 365 days in the whole year, Xinhua reported. The coming year of the Rabbit in Guimao in the lunar calendar is a leap year with a total of 384 days.
According to Zhao Zhiheng, a member of the Chinese Astronomical Society and director of the Tianjin Astronomical Society, the Gregorian calendar and the lunar calendar have different historical origins and calendar regulations. The Gregorian calendar has a leap year every four years. Normally, the year in which the number of years in the Gregorian calendar is divided by 4 is a leap year, February has 29 days, and the year that cannot be divided is a normal year, and February has 28 days. 2023 is not divisible by 4, so it is a normal year, with 365 days in total.
The lunar calendar is based on the cycle of the moon. A new moon is a month, about 29.53 days, and the whole year is generally 354 or 355 days, which is 11 days less than 365 or 366 days in the Gregorian year (also known as the return year and the solar year). In order to make the length of the lunar year close to that of the Gregorian year, the ancients adopted the method of increasing leap months, that is, adding 7 leap months to 19 lunar years; the year with leap months has 13 months, and the whole year is usually 384 days or 385 days, called leap years. As a result, the lengths of 19 lunar years and 19 calendar years are almost equal.
As for the exact month in which the leap month is placed, it has something to do with the "Zhongqi" of the 24 solar terms. The 24 solar terms are composed of 12 solar terms and 12 middle solar terms. The beginning of the month is called "solar terms" and the middle of the month is called "Zhongqi". The two are arranged alternately. The rule of adding a leap month is that every month is a normal month, and a month without it is a leap month. The "leap February" of the year of the Rabbit in the Guimao lunar calendar is not moderate, so it is the leap month of February of the previous month. Due to a "leap February", there are 384 days in the year of the Rabbit in the lunar calendar, starting on January 22, 2023 and ending on February 9, 2024.
It is worth mentioning that the large number of days in the year of Guimao Rabbit in the lunar calendar also gives rise to the calendar phenomenon of two the Beginning of Spring in this lunar year, that is, "two springs in a year", also known as "double spring years". Statistics show that seven of the 19 lunar years are "double spring years", seven are "non-spring years", and the remaining five years are normal "single spring years".
