What, When, Where, How, Who?
November
Introduction, Important Definitions and Related Concepts:
November is the eleventh month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of four Gregorian months with the length of 30 days. November retained its name (from the Latin novem meaning "nine") when January and February were added to the Roman calendar. The birthstone for November is either topaz or citrine and the birthflower is the chrysanthemum.[citation needed] November begins in western tropical astrology with the sun in the sign of Scorpio and ends in the sign of Sagittarius (astrology). Astronomically speaking, the sun actually begins in the constellation of Libra, passes through Scorpius from approximately the 24th through the 29th and ends in the constellation of Ophiuchus, which is the only zodiacal constellation that is not associated with an astrological sign. November starts on the same day of the week as both February and March in common years. A poem which is often told in schools in the United Kingdom is "No" by Thomas Hood,, playing on how the name "November" can be extended to other phrases beginning with no. Hood's poem suggests that melancholy moods associated with this month.
-
All Saints' Day (formerly All Hallows Day), a
Christian holy day, is celebrated on
November 1, the day after
Halloween. In
Sweden the All Saints'
official holiday takes place on the first
Saturday of November. In
Ireland, November 1 is regarded as the first day
of
Winter. The month is a unit of
time, used with
calendars, which is approximately as long as
some natural
period related to the motion of the
Moon; month and Moon are cognates.
The traditional concept arose with the cycle of
moon phases; such months (lunations) are
synodic months
and last approximately 29.53
days. From
excavated
tally sticks, researchers have deduced that
people counted days in relation to the Moon's phases
as early as the
Paleolithic age. Synodic months are still the
basis of many calendars today. The motion of the
Moon in its
orbit is very complicated and its period is not
constant. Moreover, many cultures (most notably
those using the ancient
Hebrew (Jewish) calendar and the
Islamic calendar) start a month with the first
appearance of the thin crescent of the
new moon after sunset over the western horizon.
The date and time of this actual observation depends
on the exact geographical longitude as well as
latitude, atmospheric conditions, the visual acuity
of the observers, etc. Therefore the beginning and
lengths of months in these calendars can not be
accurately predicted. Most Jews currently follow a
precalculated calendar, but the
Karaites rely on actual moon observations. The
period of the Moon's orbit as defined with respect
to the
celestial sphere is known as a sidereal
month because it is the time it takes the Moon to
return to a given position among the
stars (Latin: sidus): 27.321661 days (27
d 7 h 43 min 11.5 s). A year (from
Old English
gēr) is the time between two recurrences of
an event related to the
orbit of the
Earth around the
Sun. By extension, this can be applied to any
planet:: for example, a "Martian year" is the
time in which Mars completes its own orbit.
A calendar year is the time between two dates with the same name in a calendar. The Gregorian calendar attempts to keep the vernal equinox on or close to March 21; hence it follows the vernal equinox year. The average length of its year is 365.2425 days. Among solar calendars in wide use today, the Persian calendar is one of the most precise. Rather than being based on numerical rules, the Persian year begins on the day (for the time zone of Tehran) on which the vernal equinox actually falls, as determined by precise astronomical computations. 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. In the Julian calendar, the average length of a year was 365.25 days. In a non-leap year, there are 365 days, in a leap year there are 366 days. The Gregorian calendar is the most widely used calendar in the world today. It is a reform of the Julian calendar, first proposed by the Calabrian doctor Aloysius Lilius, and decreed by Pope Gregory XIII, after whom it was named, on 24 February 1582 by papal bull Inter gravissimas. Years in the reformed calendar continue the numbering system of the Julian calendar, which are numbered from the traditional Incarnation year of Jesus, which has been labeled the "anno Domini" (AD) era,[1] and is sometimes labeled the "common era" (CE), otherwise known as the "Christian Era".[2] The changes made by Gregory corrected the drift in the civil calendar which arose because the mean Julian calendar year was slightly too long, causing the vernal equinox, and consequently the date on which Easter was being celebrated, to slowly drift forward in relation to the civil calendar and the seasons. The Gregorian calendar system dropped 10 days to bring the calendar back into synchronization with the seasons and, to keep it there, adopted the following leap year rule:
Every year that is exactly divisible by four is a leap year, except for years that are exactly divisible by 100; the centurial years that are exactly divisible by 400 are still leap years. For example, the year 1900 was not a leap year; the year 2000 was a leap year.[3]
In the Julian calendar, all years exactly divisible by 4 are leap years. The Gregorian solar calendar is an arithmetical calendar. It counts days as the basic unit of time, grouping them into years of 365 or 366 days. The solar calendar repeats completely every 146,097 days, which fill 400 years, and which also happens to be 20,871 seven-day weeks. Of these 400 years, 303 (the "common years") have 365 days, and 97 (the leap years) have 366 days. A day (symbol: d) is a unit of time equivalent to 24 hours. It is not an SI unit but it is accepted for use with SI.[1] The SI unit of time is the second. The term comes from the Old English dæg. Definitions
The day has several definitions.
[edit]International System of Units (SI) A day contains 86,400 SI seconds.[1] Each second is currently defined as
… the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.
In the 19th century it had also been suggested to make a decimal fraction (1⁄10,000 or 1⁄100,000) of an astronomic day the base unit of time. This was an afterglow of the decimal time used with the French Republican Calendar, which had already been given up.
[edit]Astronomy
A day of exactly 86,400 SI seconds is the fundamental unit of time in astronomy. For a given planet, there are two types of day defined in astronomy: 1 apparent sidereal day
- The period of light when the Sun is above the
local
horizon (i.e., the period from sunrise to
sunset), opposed to
night. See
Daytime (astronomy). The full day covering a
dark and a light period, beginning from the
beginning of the dark period or from a point near
the middle of the dark period. A full dark and light
period, sometimes called a
nychthemeron in
English, from the
Greek for night-day. The period from
06:00 to 18:00 or 21:00 or some other fixed clock
period overlapping or set off from other periods
such as "morning", "evening", or "night". The mostly
regular interval of one awaking, usually in the
morning (personal day). 9 (nine)
is the
natural number following
8 and preceding
10.
Nine is a composite number, its proper divisors being 1 and 3. It is 3 times 3 and hence the third square number. 9 is a Motzkin number. It is the first composite lucky number. 9 is the second non-unitary square prime (32). It has a unique aliquot sum 4 which is itself a square prime. 9 is the only square prime with an aliquot sum of the same form. The aliquot sequence of 9 has 5 members (9,4,3,1,0) this number being the second composite member of the 3-aliquot tree. There are nine Heegner numbers. January is the first month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars, and one of seven Gregorian months with the length of 31 days. January begins (astrologically) with the sun in the sign of Capricorn and ends in the sign of Aquarius. Astronomically speaking, the sun begins in the constellation of Sagittarius and ends in the constellation of Capricornus. January is named for Janus (Ianuarius), the god of the doorway; the name has its beginnings in Roman mythology, where the Latin word for door (ianua) comes from - January is the door to the year. Traditionally, the original Roman calendar consisted of 10 months, totalling 304 days, winter being considered a monthless period. Around 713 BC, the semi-mythical successor of Romulus, King Numa Pompilius, is supposed to have added the months of January and February, allowing the calendar to equal a standard lunar year (355 days). The first day of the month is known as New Year's Day. Although March was originally the first month in the old Roman Calendar, January assumed that position beginning in 153 BC when the two consuls, for whom the years were named, began to be chosen on January 1. The reason for this shift of the new year into the dead of winter was to allow the new consuls to complete the elections and ceremonies upon becoming consuls, and still reach their respective consular armies by the start of the campaigning. Various Christian feast dates were used for the New Year in Europe in the Middle Ages, including March 25 and December 25. February is the second month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. It is the shortest month and the only month with fewer than 30 days. The month has 29 days in leap years, when the year number is divisible by four (except for years that are divisible by 100 and not by 400 in the Gregorian calendar). In common years the month has 28 days. Some believe that February originally had 29 days (30 in a leap year),[citation needed] but that idea was invented by Sacrobosco during the Middle Ages. See Month lengths. February starts on the same day of the week as both March and November in common years. February was named after the Latin term februum, which means purification, via the purification ritual Februa held on February 15 in the old Roman calendar. January and February were the last two months to be added to the Roman calendar, since the Romans originally considered winter a monthless period. They were added by Numa Pompilius about 700 BC. The Roman Empire is the phase of the ancient Roman civilization characterized by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and the Mediterranean. The Roman Empire succeeded the 500-year-old Roman Republic (510 BC – 1st century BC), which had been weakened by the civil wars of the Late Republic, and continued as the Byzantine Empire until 1453.[4] Several dates are commonly proposed to mark the transition from Republic to Empire, including the date of Julius Caesar's appointment as perpetual dictator (44 BC), the victory of Caesar's heir Octavian at the Battle of Actium (September 2, 31 BC), and the Roman Senate's granting to Octavian the honorific Augustus. (January 16, 27 BC).[5] The Latin term Imperium Romanum (Roman Empire), probably the best-known Latin expression where the word imperium denotes a territory, indicates the part of the world under Roman rule. Most of the people living there called themselves Romans[citation needed], and lived under Roman law. Roman expansion began in the days of the Republic, but reached its zenith under Emperor Trajan. At this territorial peak, the Roman Empire controlled approximately 5,900,000 km² (2,300,000 sq mi) of land surface. Because of the Empire's vast extent and long endurance, Roman influence upon the language, religion, architecture, philosophy, law and government of nations around the world lasts to this day. The end of the Roman Empire is sometimes placed at 4 September 476 AD, when the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Romulus Augustus, was deposed and not replaced. Before this date, however, the Empire had been divided into Western and Eastern halves, Emperor Diocletian, who retired in 305, having been the last sole Emperor of an undivided Empire.
= a single rotation of a planet with respect to the distant stars (for Earth it is 23.934 solar hours)
[edit]Colloquial The word refers to various relatedly defined ideas, including the following:
