Full Moon Cycle and The Year
Formulated in another way: the full moon cycle is the period that it takes the Sun to return to the perigee of the Moon's orbit (as seen from the Earth). So it is a kind of "perigee year", similar to the eclipse year which is the time for the Sun to return to the ascending node of the Moon's orbit on the ecliptic.
Why does a full moon cycle last almost 14 lunations rather than just the 12.37 lunations of a year? This would be the case, if the moon's orbit kept a constant orientation with respect to the stars, but the tidal effect of the Sun causes the orbit to precess over a cycle just under 9 years. In that time, the number of full moon cycles passed becomes one less than the number of sidereal years passed.
Hence the full moon cycle can be defined such that the lunar precession cycle is the beat period of the full moon cycle and sidereal year. See lunar precession.
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Famous quotes containing the words full, moon, cycle and/or year:
“To the horror of all who were present that day,
He uprose in full evening dress,
And with senseless grimaces endeavoured to say
What his tongue could no longer express.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“So, we’ll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast.
And the heart must pause to breathe
And love itself have rest.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“The cycle of the machine is now coming to an end. Man has learned much in the hard discipline and the shrewd, unflinching grasp of practical possibilities that the machine has provided in the last three centuries: but we can no more continue to live in the world of the machine than we could live successfully on the barren surface of the moon.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“We are playing with fire when we skip the years of three, four, and five to hurry children into being age six.... Every child has a right to his fifth year of life, his fourth year, his third year. He has a right to live each year with joy and self-fulfillment. No one should ever claim the power to make a child mortgage his today for the sake of tomorrow.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)