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Ephemeris:04/02/2026 – Determining the date of Easter

April 2, 2026 Leave a comment

This is Ephemeris for Thursday, April 2nd. Today the Sun will be up for 12 hours and 50 minutes, setting at 8:11, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:19. The Moon, 1 day past full, will rise at 9:14 this evening.

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 generally begins at sundown on the night of the 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 began last night at sunset, so this year it is nearly in agreement with the Gospel narrative.

The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EST, UT – 5 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum

Calendar pages showing the relationship of the first full moon after the vernal equinox and Easter, the following Sunday.
This calendar shows the relationship between Easter, the first full moon of spring, and vernal equinox, the first day of spring. In the calculation of Easter, March 21st is considered the date of the vernal equinox, no matter when it actually falls. This year it fell on the 20th,* even in Europe, and the Holy Land. The full moon date is also what I would call a tabular value. The Moon’s orbit is elliptical so a tabular date may not be the exact date of a full moon. So it may be a day off from the actual full moon date.

*Our Gregorian Calendar will correct for this by making the year 2100, normally a leap year of 366 days, an ordinary year of 365 days. The rule is that century years not divisible by 400 get clipped.

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