Year - Calendar Year

Calendar Year

A calendar year is the time between two dates with the same name in a calendar. A half year (one half of a year) may run from January to June, or July to December.

No astronomical year has an integer number of days or lunar months, so any calendar that follows an astronomical year must have a system of intercalation such as leap years. Financial and scientific calculations often use a 365-day calendar to simplify daily rates.

In the Julian calendar, the average length of a year is 365.25 days. In a non-leap year, there are 365 days, in a leap year there are 366 days. A leap year occurs every four years.

The Gregorian calendar attempts to keep the vernal equinox on or soon before March 21, hence it follows the vernal equinox year. The average length of this calendar's year is 365.2425 days (as 97 out of 400 years are leap years); this is within one ppm of the current length of the mean tropical year (365.24219 days). It is estimated that, by the year 4000, the vernal equinox will fall back by one day in the Gregorian calendar, not because of this difference, but because of the slowing down of the Earth's rotation and the associated lengthening of the sidereal day.

The Revised Julian calendar, as used in some Eastern Orthodox Churches, also tries to synchronize with the tropical year. The average length of this calendar's year is 365.242222 days (as 218 out of 900 years are leap years). Gregorian and Revised Julian calendars will start to differ in 2800.

The Persian calendar, in use in Afghanistan and Iran, has its year begin on the day of the vernal equinox as determined by astronomical computation (for the time zone of Tehran), as opposed to using an algorithmic system of leap years.