Editing Solar calendar (section)

{{Short description|Calendar based on the seasons or apparent sun position}}
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A '''solar calendar''' is a [[calendar]] whose dates indicates the [[season]] or almost equivalently the apparent [[position of the Sun]] relative to the stars. The [[Gregorian calendar]], widely accepted as a standard in the world, is an example of a solar calendar.
The main other types of calendar are [[lunar calendar]] and [[lunisolar calendar]], whose months correspond to cycles of [[Moon phase]]s. The months of the Gregorian calendar do not correspond to cycles of the Moon phase.

The Egyptians appear to have been the first to develop a solar calendar, using as a fixed point the annual sunrise reappearance of the Dog Star—[[Sirius]], or Sothis—in the eastern sky, which coincided with the annual flooding of the Nile River. They constructed a calendar of 365 days, consisting of 12 months of 30 days each, with 5 days added at the year’s end. The Egyptians’ failure to account for the extra fraction of a day, however, caused their calendar to drift gradually into error.