Days, Weeks, Months, and Years... and Moons? Time in Equestria.

Hello all! Lightning Striker here!

Something in my story raised a few questions for me, as well as some of you. The main question was about time in Equestria. Well, I have come up with a system for the Equestrian Calendar!

Things start out simply in the Equestrian Calendar. We have days, weeks, months, and years, as well as the smaller units of seconds, minutes and hours. Things seemed to be simple. The smaller units were the same as ours, so the big ones must be as well. The ones we know for certain are the same are seconds, minutes, hours, days, and weeks. 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, as well as having 4 seasons of 3 months each per year, leaving us with 12 months per year. And so we assumed that it must be the same months as us, as well as the same amount of days per month, and 365 days a year. For those thinking month is not a significant unit of time in Equestria, it is mentioned over 40 times in the show.

Then, in Apple Family Reunion, and then again in Equestria Girls, we were introduced to the unit of time known as the Moon. Many assumed that moon was simply the Equestrian way of saying month, but the word month is used more often than Moon (when Moon is a unit of time.) Moon has been used pretty inconsistently in how long it could be since then, due to difference of writers. But, there must be at least some consistency that the writers may not even know what they are adhering to, at least something we could use that would make sense.

The first thing we need to remember is this, Equestria is not Earth, it does not even follow the same physics as Earth. The Sun and Moon are moved by Magic, around Equestria, Equestria is not orbiting around the Sun. So too the moon. The Equestrian Moon does not reflect the Sun, and does not have phases, while ours does. Our year is determined by how long it takes to make one orbit around the Sun (or, even in ancient times, when they did not know this, but still got approximately a year, how long it took for constellations to get back to the same place.) The month we have is determined by the moon, how long it takes to go from one full to another, approximately. It is actually 28 days, so there are about 13 times the moon orbits us per year. But, our approximately 30 days per month came from that, and Equestria does not have that to determine their month.

So then, How many days are in a month, a Moon, and a year?

The first think I did in determining this was to determine the moon to year equivalence. Through using Apple Family Reunion, specifically the fact that it happens "Every 100 Moons," and that multiple times AJ says "This year," such as when she said that the quilt would be finished "this year" and that the photo wouldn't be taken in front of the barn "this year" led me to believe there were 100 moons per year. This was supported by the fact that, in that same episode, the last family reunion photo, Apple Bloom, AJ, and Big Mac don't really look any younger. Also the fact that a family reunion is more of a yearly thing. So, now I had that 100 Moons is in a year. Equestria Girls seemed to negatively effect people's guesses that a Moon was just Luna metaphorically saying a day through the fact that a month isn't that long. But 30 moons being over a fourth of a year, over an entire season, would seem to put Equestria in more danger.

But what does 100 Moons a year mean for us? And how many days is in a Moon? How many days a year? Hay, how many days a month, even?

Given that a Moon still should be an amount of days, and the fact that the length of an Equestrian Year should not be too different from an Earth years, for example, we don't want it ridiculously long, like 600 days, or too short for even the show, or generally short, we don't want it to be 200 days either. I enjoy EQG, and due to our interactions of characters from Canterlot High (namely Sunset) and Equestria, it seems that time passes the same for both. 1 Earth day = 1 Equestria day. So, we cannot say, that since time passes differently in both worlds, a Moon doesn't matter as much. If a Moon were 4 days, it would be 400 days a year, and thus there would be about 33 and a third day per month. OR we can set an Equestrian Moon as 3 days. The year would then be 300 days, and a month would be exactly 25 days each. We would also have 25 Moons a season. Also, that would make the portal open for one Moon before closing.

25 Moons a season, 25 days a month, 12 months a year, 100 Moons a year, each season change possibly happen when a new month and moon happen on the same day. It has a sort of Harmony to it.

Also, this makes an Earth year longer than an Equestrian year, so if Sunset was away for 6 years (in Equestrian years), then she would have only been on Earth for a little under 5 Earth years, which, though I am hesitant to say, I think it possible that she has been on Earth that long. Our years are different lengths, but every second here is a second there.

Note: though I did this to help my story, The Sunset Also Rises, in aspects of timeline, my story is not necessary for this calculation, and 3 days a Moon I think still does work with the show, even in later examples.

Thank you all!
Lightning Striker