Lunar New Year: The Astronomy of Chinese New Year Explained – Newsweek

The Chinese New Year or the Lunar New Year falls on Tuesday with over a billion people in China and millions of others around the world celebrating the beginning of the Year of the Tiger.

The beginning of the 15-day festival on February 1 and the end of the Year of the Ox, also marks the date of the new moon in Asia. The celebrations are considered to be a time to honor ancestors and deities as well as spending time with family.

Though China follows the Gregorian calendara solar dating system introduced Pope Gregory XIII in 1582in everyday life, the Chinese calendar is used to mark traditional holidays like the New Year.

This calendar is lunisolar in nature, which means that it is based on the cycles of both the moon and the sun. The Lunar New Year begins each year with the first new moon of the lunar calendar.

According to the Farmer's Almanac, the new moon is essentially the opposite of the full moon. Rather than seeing the side of the moon illuminated by the sun as we do during a full moon with the effect of making it appear as a bright full disc, during the new moon, we see the moon's non-illuminated side making it appear mostly dark blending in with the night sky.

This happens because the new moon marks the time during the lunar cycle at which the moon is almost perfectly aligned with Earth on one side and the sun on the other. Because the moon takes 29.5 days to orbit the Earth and complete a lunar cycle this usually occurs once a month.

In the Chinese calendar, a month lasts a lunar cycle, with its first day marked by the new moon. There are usually 12 months in a Chinese calendar year, but in order to catch up with the Gregorian calendar an extra month is added every two or three years.

All of this means that the Lunar New Year falls on a different day each year though it always falls between January 20 and February 21 on the Gregorian calendar. The first new moon in Asia this year occurred at 1:46 pm Beijing time on February 1, or 12:46 am ET on the same day.

The end of the 15-day New Year celebration is also marked by a significant event in the lunar cycle, the full moon following the year's first new moon.

The end of New Year celebrations in Asian countries including China, North and South Korea, Singapore, Mongolia, Tibet, and Vietnam falls on February 15 this year. This is timed each year to coincide with the full moon following the first new moon of the year and will be marked by The Lantern Festival. This may not always be the first full moon of the year according to the Gregorian calendar.

The Year of the Tiger, which occurs once every 12 years with the last one in 2010, will last until the first new moon of next year which falls on January 22, 2023. This marks the beginning of the Year of the Water Rabbit.

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Lunar New Year: The Astronomy of Chinese New Year Explained - Newsweek