Re: The New Year

James Landau wrote:

> The middle of three moons . . . that's an interesting way of choosing.
Well, the middle moon gave a more convenient division of the year (15
and a fraction cycles of phases as opposed to 7 and a fraction).  Some
cultures used the outer moon, tho.  The inner moon isn't really a moon
per se, but rather a captured asteroid, and its orbit is far too quick
to be useful, being around a day and a half.

Incidentally, the orbit is eccentric enough that at perigee it actually
moves faster than the planetary rotation, so that in the sky it would
appear to reverse course temporarily.

> How many Earth days does a year on your conplanet last?
About 407.8 Earth days.

> which in modern Kankonia has the status of the Ancient Egyptian
> calendar on Earth.
What status is that?  :-)

> I'm thinking of having them give a name to every day of the month like
> on the Mayan calendar
They didn't actually have a name of each day of the month.  They had a
20-day week.  As the months were 20 days each that meant that within a
single year the first of each month had the same name, the second of
each month had the same name, etc., but, there was also a 5-day "month"
at the end of the year, with no interruption of the 20-day month, so
that the next year would start with a different day of that 20-day week.

> Clever idea! Is there any cultural significance and religious
> mythology associated with having the night or the daytime split into
> two Halves?
First half of day is Sun Rising (sunrise to noon, that is, the sun's
highest point in the sky), second half of day is Sun Falling (noon to
sunset), first half of night is Sun Falling (sunset to midnight, that
is, when the sun is the furthest under ground), second half of night is
Sun Rising (midnight to sunrise)

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