In With The New

Tuesday marks the first day of the New Year in the Gregorian calendar system, established by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. It defined the yearly orbit of the Earth around the Sun as 365 days (366 days every 4th year, more or less), divided between 12 months. And it keeps consistent calendar time pretty darn well, with an occasional few seconds added or subtracted here and there to keep pace with the reality of changing orbital mechanics.

But it's not the only "New Years Day"'; there are a couple of dozen other days scattered around the year on which other cultures and calendars mark the start of yet another cycle of our planet around our star.

Regardless of how we humans mark the passage of time, the Earth quietly continues its majestic elliptical orbit around the Sun's mass, following the curve of gravity's warping of the fabric of space itself.

And to top it all off, we have the incredibly awesome privilege of being conscious beings, able to gaze out into this universe, and celebrate the wonder of it all.

Have a wonder-full New Year!

P.S. The following video is a time lapse movie of Earth from NASA's Messenger spacecraft (launched Aug 2004). The stunning hi-res video was recorded in Aug 2005, a year later, as the spacecraft swung by Earth again for a gravity assist slingshot towards Venus. Its ultimate goal is to achieve orbit around Mercury (the innermost planet to the sun) in 2009 - 2011.