The solar calendar is based on the earth's
period of revolution around the sun, so a solar calendar year approximates a
tropical year.
The widely used Gregorian Calendar is
a solar calendar. According to the calendar, each year consists of 365 days (in
most cases) divided into 12 months, with each month having the same number of
days for every year. The length of the Gregorian Calendar was only 26
seconds different from that of a tropical year, meaning a difference of 1 day
every 3,300 years.
However, since the length of a tropical year
in days is not a whole number, to prevent the calendar from going out of tune
with the movement of the sun, the calendar itself has a special feature. Certain
years of the calendar have an extra day which is inserted to the second month,
and are called leap years. The determination of a leap year under the
Gregorian Calendar follows a simple algorithm: if the year can be divided
by 4 and not by 100, or if it can be divided by 400, then it will be a leap
year.
The Gregorian Calendar can be traced
back to the ancient Egypt, where
the first solar calendar in the world was invented based on the observations of
the Sirius and the sun. So the calendar is also called Sirius Calendar.
Later, ancient Romans mastered the calendar. Afterwards, the calendar spread
throughout the world with the expansion of the Roman
Empire and the rising of
Christianity.