Dawn | New Year horizon Twilight before sunrise No longer completely dark |
T
he calendar is a fabricated cultural system of categorizing time passage thus providing structure to social or managerial activities. This organization is accomplished by assigning names to different sub-set periods of time, like days, weeks, months and years. Some of these periods are synchronized with astronomical phenomenon, such as rotational cycles. A year, which starts anew today, is the time between two event recurrences related to the Earth's orbit around the Sun. 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. One second was added to 2008 to help compensate for this variance.
“The world's official timekeepers have added a "leap second" to the last day of the year on Wednesday, to help match clocks to the Earth's slowing spin on its axis, which takes place at ever-changing rates affected by tides and other factors.” - Reuters
