easter documentation

NAME

easter; da.easter.muf - print the date on which Easter Sunday falls.

SYNOPSIS

easter year

DESCRIPTION

easter is a MUF program which calculates and prints the date of Easter Sunday in any year in the Gregorian calendar.

easter expects a single number as its argument stating the year to calculate easter for. The year must be at least 1583 (the first year for which Easter occurs in the Gregorian Calendar). The century must be included.

The algorithm used to calculate the date of Easter was taken from Practical Astronomy with your Calculator, by Peter Duffett-Smith.

EXAMPLES

To get the date of Easter in 1996, type

    easter 1996

The program returns the result, April 7.

BUGS

The program only calculates Easter Sunday, not the other feasts which depend on it. For reference, you can move the result by the following number of days and get the other feasts.

Shrove Tuesday precedes Easter Sunday by 47 days.
Ash Wednesday precedes Easter Sunday by 46 days.
Good Friday precedes Easter Sunday by 2 days.
Easter Monday follows Easter Sunday by 1 day.
Easter Tuesday follows Easter Sunday by 2 days.
Ascension Thursday follows Easter Sunday by 39 days.

AUTHOR

Deborah Pickett (<Ariel> on FDCMuck).