When is 2006, the beginning of autumn?
Early this morning, some readers called our newspaper to ask about the exact time of beginning of autumn this year. Mr. Guo, who lives in Hongqiao District, called to say that two small calendars at home played a "beginning of autumn", one was "beginning of autumn on the 7th" and the other was "beginning of autumn on the 8th" (the exact time was not specified). Liu Daniang, who lives in Nankai District, is more meticulous. Beginning of autumn's specific time on her calendar card is "00: 40", which Liu Aunt thinks is wrong.
According to these different versions of beginning of autumn, the astronomical experts in this city gave an accurate answer: on August 7th, Beijing time was 23: 4 1, and the sun reached longitude 135 degrees, and now it is the "beginning of autumn" among the 24 solar terms. This time is calculated by the authoritative department, namely the calendar office of Purple Mountain Observatory, which is based on Beijing time.
It has happened before that calendars got beginning of autumn time wrong. Some calendars often make mistakes when there are solar terms at 23: 00 (there is always 00: 00), and the time it takes is definitely not Beijing time. Beijing is located in the East Eighth District. The time difference is about 1 hour if it is based on the time in the East Ninth District (such as Japan) east of Beijing. In a word, the time in beginning of autumn is not uniform, which is caused by the inconsistency or imprecision of some calendars with Beijing time.
Astronomical experts say that beginning of autumn time is relatively fixed, either August 7th or 8th. According to the astronomical calendar statistics, beginning of autumn time has certain regularity, and there will be a beginning of autumn on August 8th every four years. The last autumn on August 8 was in 2003, and the next autumn was in 2007.