The Sun and Moon in Indonesian

As I continue with Katla, the Indonesian version of Wordle, my latest result is shown in Figure 1. All the words shown are acceptable Indonesian words from Katla's viewpoint, even though final and viral are also words in English. The final word, hilal, I had to guess at and I choose it because I knew halal was a word and hilal was very similar. A quick check using Google Translate returned the meaning "new moon". I thought I'd investigate further.

Figure 1

To my surprise, the word didn't appear at all in my Indonesian dictionary that I have sitting on the hard drive of my laptop as a PDF. However, there was an entry in the Indonesian Wikipedia that states:

Hilal adalah bulan sabit muda pertama yang dapat dilihat setelah terjadinya konjungsi (ijtimak, bulan baru) pada arah dekat matahari terbenam yang menjadi acuan permulaan bulan dalam kalender Islam. Biasanya hilal diamati pada hari ke-29 dari bulan Islam untuk menentukan apakah hari berikutnya sudah terjadi pergantian bulan atau belum. Hilal juga merupakan bagian dari fase – fase bulan.

Google Translate renders this as: 

Hilal is the first young crescent that can be seen after conjunction (ijtimak, new moon) in the direction near sunset which is a reference to the beginning of the month in the Islamic calendar. Usually the new moon is observed on the 29th day of the Islamic month to determine whether the following day has taken place or not. The new moon is also part of the moon phases.

The sighting of this new moon is most important in determining the start of Ramadan. This realisation of what hilal meant motivated me to look at some other astronomical terms. One that I'm familiar with is "solar system" that translates as tata surya which is surprising because the word for "sun" is matahari, the eye in the sky. Why is surya used instead? 

I put the following question to ChatGPT:

Why do Indonesians use the word "surya" to refer to the sun when used in the phrase "tata surya" or solar system? The normal word for the Sun in Indonesian is "matahari".

It thought about it for a good while and then provided this quite reasonable response:

The word "surya" is derived from Sanskrit and is commonly used in Indonesia to refer to the Sun in certain cultural and religious contexts. "Tata Surya" literally means "system of the Sun" and refers to the solar system. The use of the term "surya" emphasizes the importance and significance of the Sun in ancient Hindu-Buddhist belief systems that have influenced Indonesian culture. 

The word for the Moon of course in bulan but this word also means "month" which is not surprising as the Islamic world uses a lunar calendar and not a solar one. Thus the Moon marks the months. The phases of the Moon are as follows:

• bulan sabit - crescent moon (sabit means "sickle")
  
  
• bulan bungkuk - gibbous moon (bungkuk means "hunchback")
  
  
• bulan purnama - full moon (or purnama can be used by itself)
  
  
• gerhana matahari - solar eclipse (gerhana means "eclipse")
  
  
• gerhana bulan - lunar eclipse
  
  
• gerhana cincin - annular eclipse (cincin means "ring")

That will do it for this post.

Reflections on 23500

Today I'm 23500 days old and I was looking around to see if there was any significance to this number. It's factors are unremarkable (2^2 x 5^3 x 47) but the fact that it's halfway between 23000 and 24000 means that it pops up quite frequently in Internet searches, as would 22500 or 24500 I would imagine. A search reveals that the approximate population of Boston in 1620 was 23500 and there are several towns around the world that are listed as having this population currently e.g. Bishopbriggs in Scotland.

Bishopbriggs grew from a small rural village on the old road from Glasgow to Kirkintilloch and Stirling during the 19th century, eventually growing to incorporate the adjacent villages of Auchinairn, Cadder, Jellyhill and Mavis Valley. It currently has a population of approximately 23,500 people.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishopbriggs

It turns out that Mount Isa has the same population (source):

Mount Isa is located just 200 kilometres from the Northern Territory border and 1,829 kilometres from Queensland’s capital, Brisbane. The nearest major city, Townsville, can be found 883 kilometres from The Isa. Mount Isa covers an area of over 43,310 square kilometres, making it geographically the second largest city in Australia to Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Western Australia ... With a population of approximately 23,500, Mount Isa is a major service centre for north-west Queensland.

Many other examples of towns having populations of about 23500 could be quoted. In addition of populations, the number sometimes comes up as a dollar figure (source):

In its third annual funding cycle, the Black Philanthropy Initiative has pumped $23,500 back into the Winston-Salem area to help African Americans improve their parenting skills.

Interestingly, it turns out that the centre of the Sun is about 23500 times more distant from us than the centre of the Earth (source).

The sun is far enough away (about 23,500 earth radii) that it took a long time before people knew accurately how far away the sun was. Certainly the ancient Greeks had calculated the distance, but they also knew that their results could be off. 

Many countries in the world have five digit postal codes or zip codes as they are sometimes known. These codes identify particular locations within the country e.g. Muang Prachinburi, Prachinburi, Thailand has a postcode of 23500. The United States uses a five digit system but apparently there is no location corresponding to 23500, although there is for 23499 and 23501.