It is May 25, 1977. You've just watched this crazy, amazing movie called "Star Wars". It's like nothing you've ever seen before. It fills you with energy and happiness, and most of all, hope. You want to see it again and again.
But what if it wasn't a movie? What if, instead, it was a live report from the Battle of Yavin, broadcast by the rebels in the hope that someone out there might watch the report of their desperate fight against the Empire, and send help. Of course, those rebels sent that report a long time ago, from a galaxy far, far away. It then traveled through space at the speed of light, eventually reaching Earth.
Since that epochal day, time marched forward on Yavin and across the rest of that galaxy just as it has here on Earth. When 100 days have passed on Earth, 100 days had also passed on Yavin, long ago. Because we know when the report was first sent by the rebels--Day 0 of Month 0 of Year 0 ABY (After Battle of Yavin)--and we know when we first saw the report--May 25, 1977--we can create a clock to show the progression of time from 0:0:0 ABY. That is what this clock tries to do.
In the top section, the clock displays "Aurebesh Clock" ... in Aurebesh. It then displays the name of the then-current day of the week, followed by the year, month, and day ABY. It then displays the now-current time on a separate line. Coruscant [weekday-name] YY-MM-DD ABY. Local HH:MM:SS.
Beneath that, the individual details are listed, one per line: year; month and "name" (see below); week of the month; day of the month; day of the week and name; day of the year; and again the current time in hours:minutes:seconds.
On Earth, 1 year lasts about 365 days. But on Coruscant, the heart of the the Republics and Empire, their Galactic Standard years lasted 368 days. They counted months and weeks differently too, with 5 days per week, 7 weeks per month, and 10 months per year. Each month was 5 * 7 = 35 days long. Each year also had 3 additional festival weeks, plus 3 holidays. 5 * 7 * 10 = 350 days in the 10 months, plus 5 * 3 = 15 days in the festival weeks, plus 3 holidays. 350 + 15 + 3 = 368 days total in each year.
Much like how we switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, the leaders of the Republic eventually switched their calendar system to a different one. But the calendar described here was the one used during the Battle of Yavin, and it was the one that treated that battle with such importance that it restarted counting from the very day of the battle. So, that is the calendar that this clock uses.
Luckily, the Coruscant day was exactly the same length as an Earth day, 24 hours, and they counted time in seconds, minutes, and hours just like here on Earth. So this clock simply displays your local time.
Surprisingly, no one in the entire galaxy ever thought to name the months. They named the weekdays, but not the months. Well, someone probably did. Rumor has it that the Ewoks assigned good and proper names to all 10 months, but they did it during the reign of the Emperor, and were pointedly ignored. Thus leading to yet another reason for the unexpected viciousness of the cuddly Ewoks during the Battle of Endor.
Because of the lack of names, this clock uses the names of the first 10 letters of the Aurebesh alphabet in addition to the months' numbers.
The code for this clock is written entirely in Javascript or ECMAscript or whatever it is currently called, and it runs entirely in your browser. (You can look at and copy/paste its source code by right-clicking on the clock's window or tab, and selecting "View Source Code" from the pop-up menu.) Because calender and date and time calculations are notoriously tricky, and because I am notoriously bad at even the most basic calendaring things (such as adding an event to a calendar, or remembering to show up for that event), this code is almost certainly rife with glaring bugs, one-off errors, fumble-fingered typos, and the like. Don't plan your rebellions around it.
I don't know what time of day the very first showing during the premiere of Star Wars was, so this clock just uses midnight on May 25, 1977 for computing the offset to Galactic Standard dates.
Note that the Battle of Yavin occured on date 0:0:0 ABY but 35:3:7 in the post-Great ReSynchronization calendar. As noted above, this clock does not deal with post-GRS dating.
Nor does this clock currently handle the festival weeks or holidays in any special way, mostly because there don't seem to be many details out there about them, including when exactly in the year they fell. (Were they all together in a clump at the end of each year? What were the names of the festivals and holidays, and what did they celebrate?)
The Aurebesh font is beautiful and so very evocative of space adventures, but it is not the most legible font. One wonders how the Empire ever managed to build anything while using that notation, particularly the almost identical glyphs for the numbers 0 and 8. Perhaps that is why they often had terrible safety and security issues, such as missing handrails, lack of speederbike collision sensors, and unscreened ports on their largest battlestations.
Most of the info used to make this clock comes from the amazing Star Wars Fan Wiki Galactic Standard Calendar page. Star Wars fans, you truly are the best.
The fonts used are works of art and love from the Aurek Fonts gang. They are so very wonderful, and show such devotion and attention to detail that they move the heart. And they are free to use for all personal and commercial use. Bravo!
Aurebesh AF font used for the entirety of the main clock page, except for the "What Is This" link. Pure unadulterated Aurebesh.
Aurebesh English font used for the headers of this page and the link to this page. Looks like Aurebesh, reads like English!
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