The Julian Day Number only contains information on the calendar date and day of the week on which it occurs. The JD Number does not contain any time-of-day information (see Julian Date below).
The Julian Day Number acts as a sequential serial number for the given date. Every date on our mathematical calendar system is assigned a unique integer serial number starting with 0, 1, 2, 3, … up to the current date. Since the mathematical origin of our calendar system is in the far distant past, JD Numbers are 7 digits long today.
Calendar Origin Date Julian Date JD Number ---------- ------------------ ----------- --------- Julian BC 4713-Jan-01-Mon -0.5 0 Gregorian BC 4714-Nov-24-Mon -0.5 0
The JD Number for the first day of the year AD 2023 is:
for AD 2023-Jan-01-Sun JDNum = 2459946
In other words, the first day of the year AD 2023 was the 2459946th day on the mathematical model of the Gregorian calendar system. No other date on the entire Gregorian calendar has that unique serial number.
JD Number 2369916 = The date AD 1776-Jul-04-Thu
Given the Julian Day Numbers of any two dates in history, the difference between them is the exact count of days between those dates, automatically accounting for any leap years in between.
Given any Julian Day Number on either the old Julian or modern Gregorian calendars, the day of the week (DoW) index can easily be found by:
DoW = (JDNum + 1) mod 7
X mod 7 simply means the integer remainder after dividing integer X by 7.
Example for the DoW of AD 1776-Jul-04 = JD Number 2369916
Where DoW: 0=Sun, 1=Mon, 2=Tue, 3=Wed, 4=Thu, 5=Fri and 6=Sat
DoW = (2369916 + 1) mod 7 = 2369917 mod 7 = 4 = Thursday
Although they are related, the Julian Date and Julian Day Number are not exactly the same thing nor is the Julian Day Number simply the integer part of the Julian Date.
The relationship between the Julian Date (JD) and the Julian Day Number is: JDNum = floor(JD + 0.5)
Unlike the Julian Day Number, which is always an integer, the Julian Date value can contain a decimal fraction part that gives us the time of day on the corresponding date.
For example:
Julian Date = 2459963.67717631 corresponds to date and time = AD 2023-Jan-19-Thu at 04:15:08.033 JDNum = floor(JD + 0.5) = floor(2459963.67717631 + 0.5) = floor(2459964.17717631) = 2459964 (Corresponding to date AD 2023-Jan-19-Thu)
To obtain the time of day elements (HH, mm, ss) from the Julian Date, where HH = 00 to 24 hours:
hrs = 24*(JD - floor(JD + 0.5) + 0.5) = 24*(2459963.67717631 - floor(2459963.67717631 + 0.5) + 0.5); = 24*(0.177176310215145); = 4.25223144516349 HH = floor(hrs) = floor(4.25223144516349) = 4 min = 60*(hrs - HH) = 60*(4.25223144516349 - 4) = 60*(0.2522314451635) = 15.1338867098099 mm = floor(min) = floor(15.1338867098099) = 15 ss = 60*(min - mm) = 60*(15.1338867098099 - 15) = 60*(0.1338867098099) = 8.03320258859401 So, the derived time of day elements are: Time of Day = HH:mm:ss.sss = 04:15:08.033 So, the Julian Date value 2459963.67717631, equates to the calendar date and time: AD 2023-Jan-19-Thu at 04:15:08.033 on the modern Gregorian calendar.