Quick answers to Lunar Calendar questions

If you have ever wondered about the date of your birthday or the 12-year cycle in the Lunar Calendar, the Hong Kong Observatory has devised an easy solution and it's available on the Internet.

The Observatory has compiled a set of conversion tables for the Gregorian and Lunar calendars between 1901 and 2010 that will answer some of these questions and provide other interesting facts.

The conversion tables contain information on the Gregorian and Lunar calendar dates, the Sexagenary Cycle, 12-Year Cycle, 24 solar terms and the dates that the Hong Kong Summer Time was enforced.

By referring to the Hong Kong Observatory's web page http://www.weather.gov.hk/gts/time/conversion.htm the public can now readily find answers to questions about birthdays, leap months in the Lunar Calendar, or Lunar New Year Day in 2004.

The Observatory decided to launch the new service in response to growing interest from the public in the Lunar Calendar.

One of the most popular services provided by the HKO is its network time service, which was introduced in 1999 to facilitate computer users to synchronise their computer clocks through the Internet.

Up to the end of June, over 250 million hits were recorded. In the past year, the daily hit rate exceeded 400,000.

Computer users can synchronise their computer clocks to the Hong Kong Standard Time by downloading suitable software from the Internet and designating HKO's Internet time server 'stdtime.gov.hk' as the network time server in the software. Details can be found in HKO's website: http://www.weather.gov.hk/nts/ntime.htm.

The Observatory uses a Caesium beam atomic clock to maintain the Hong Kong Standard Time with an accuracy of up to fractions of a microsecond a day.

Ends/Tuesday, July 23, 2002