Archive

Archive for March 29, 2024

Ephemeris: 03/29/2024 – Calculating the date of Easter

March 29, 2024 Comments off

This is Ephemeris for Good Friday, March 29th. Today the Sun will be up for 12 hours and 39 minutes, setting at 8:07, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:26. The Moon, 3 days before last quarter, will rise at 1:09 tomorrow morning.

Easter will be celebrated by Western Christian churches this Sunday. Easter is a movable feast in that it falls on a different date each year following the first full moon of spring. It was an attempt to follow the Jewish Passover, which starts on the 15th of the month of Nisan. The Jewish calendar being a lunar calendar, the 15th is generally the night of the full moon, sometimes called the Paschal Full Moon. And since the Last Supper was a Seder, according to at least one Gospel, the Christian church wanted to link Easter with Passover as closely as possible using the Roman solar based (Julian) calendar. That’s not always the case, especially with our current Gregorian Calendar. Passover this year begins at sunset April 22nd because the Jewish lunar calendar is tied to the Julian Calendar.

The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EDT, UT–4 hours). They may be different for your location.

Addendum

Ostara (Oestre) by Johannes Gehrts  (1855–1921)
This is the Germanic goddess of spring and dawn Oestre, from whose name we get the word Easter. Since the dawn arrives from the east, I think the word East comes from her name too. As far as I’ve checked the name of the feast of the Resurrection is related to the Passover in most other Euopean countries. Credit: Ostara (Oestre) by Johannes Gehrts  (1855–1921), via Wikipedia.
Categories: Calendar, Celebration, Ephemeris Program Tags: , , , ,