Defnition of Besselian Year

Besselian year.
A quantity introduced by F. W. Bessel in the nineteenth century that has been used into the twentieth century. Bessel introduced a system whereby it would be convenient to identify any instant of time by giving the year and the decimal fraction of the year to a few places, but the starting time of the year was not convenient for dynamical studies that utilize Julian dates (see definition for Julian date), differing by 0.5 day, and the Besselian year varies slowly. The recent change to Julian year usage in dynamical astronomy (and the J2000.0 equinox) took effect in solar-system ephemerides of the Minor Planet Center and Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams on Jan. 1, 1992. (See Julian year.)

Julian date (JD).
The interval of time in days (and fraction of a day) since Greenwich noon on Jan. 1, 4713 BC. The JD is always half a day off from Universal Time, because the current definition of JD was introduced when the astronomical day was defined to start at noon (prior to 1925) instead of midnight. Thus, 1995 Oct. 10.0 UT = JD 2450000.5.

Julian year.
Exactly 365.25 days, in which a century (100 years) is exactly 36525 days and in which 1900.0 corresponds exactly to 1900 January 0.5 (from the Julian-date system, which is half a day different from civil time or UT). The standard epoch J2000.0, now used for new star-position catalogues and in solar-system-orbital calculations, means 2000 Jan. 1.5 Barycentric Dynamical Time (TDB) = Julian Date 2451545.0 TDB. When this dynamical, artificial "Julian year" is employed, a letter "J" prefixes the year.