CalculationTime

Lunar Debt Calendar

Time Duration Calculator
CalculationTime

Lunar Debt Calendar

A live explainer for the 10.88-day lunar debt: why pure lunar calendars drift and lunisolar calendars need leap months.

Inputs, result, proof and time.

Use the instrument above, then check the calculation record, assumptions and related tools below.

Debt ledger

10.88 days

235 lunar months nearly match 19 tropical years
12 lunar months
354.37 d
Tropical year
365.24 d
19-year gap
0.09 d
Leap months
7 in 19

Islamic

Never pays the solar debt. Twelve lunar months stay honestly lunar, so 1 Muharram walks backward through Gregorian seasons.

Hebrew

Pays on a fixed arithmetic pattern. Seven leap months in a 19-year Metonic cycle keep festivals near their seasonal anchors.

Chinese

Pays from sky rules. Leap months are tied to solar terms, so the rhythm often lands near seven in nineteen years but is not just a stored table.

JanMarMayJulSepNov

Across 40 Gregorian years, 1 Muharram moves from 2020-08-20 to 2059-06-11 and wraps through the seasons 1 time.

20212223242526272829303132333435363738
13131313131313
42653116

In 2020-2038, browser ICU data shows 7 Hebrew leap-month years and 7 Chinese leap-month years. The theoretical Metonic debt asks for 7 extra lunar months because 235 - (19 x 12) = 7.

Method

Synodic month = 29.530588861 days. Mean tropical year = 365.242189 days. The walk and ledger read Islamic Umm al-Qura, Hebrew and Chinese labels from ECMAScript Intl/ICU calendar data in the browser.

Trust boundary

This is an explanatory CalculationTime instrument, not an official religious calendar or moon-sighting authority. Observed Islamic dates can differ from civil Umm al-Qura labels by location and authority.

Method

The calculator makes the lunar shortfall visible

Twelve mean synodic months are compared with the mean tropical year. The result is the annual lunar debt; the chart then reads browser Intl calendar data to show how that debt appears in Islamic, Hebrew and Chinese calendar systems.

Formula

Debt = 365.242189 - (12 x 29.530588861) = 10.875 days per tropical year.

Source boundary

Islamic labels use the browser's Umm al-Qura civil calendar data. Observed moon-sighting and official religious decisions can differ by a day.

Input source

Adapted from Billy's downloaded `lunar-debt.html` into the CalculationTime hero/page system.