Perpetual Chinese Calendar

LunarCal  User's Guide

Introduction

LunarCal is a perpetual Chinese Lunar Calendar program. It completely enumerates 160 years (1900-2060) of the Chinese Lunar calendar. Although LunarCal is a full fledge astronomical program (Sun & Moon), only the relevant data associated with the Chinese Lunar Calendar are displayed. LunarCal is not an astronomy program but a perpetual calendar program.

The main objective of this program is to predict on which date the Chinese New Year falls for a given Gregorian year. It also calculates the dates of important Chinese festival such as Li Chun (first day of Spring), Qing Ming (Pure Brightness), Moon Cake Festival (15^th day of 8^th lunar month) and Dong (Winter Solstice). Other festival dates will be added later.

Presently, LunarCal only displays one lunar month at a time.

All seasonal names are referred to in the Beijing, China context (i.e.. Northern Hemisphere).

Technical

LunarCal is written in the programming C++ language.

Accuracy

The program has been manually checked against various published sources for the Moon's and Sun's orbital parameters. The generated Chinese Lunar calendar has also been checked against published calendars.

Disclaimer

This program is provided on an "as is where is" and "use at own risk" basis. No warranties of any kind, implied or expressed with regards to the fitness of the program for any particular purpose is given.