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, full, moon, cycle and/or year:
“The full moon
cannot gain
a likeness to your face,
so god destroys it
time and again,
as if to create it
by some other means.”
—Hla Stavhana (c. 50 A.D.)
“Many people come into company full of what they intend to say in it themselves, without the least regard to others; and thus charged up to the muzzle are resolved to let it off at any rate.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Ms. Dog wouldn’t give them her buttocks.
She would moon at them.
Just at the killers of the dream.
The bus boys of the soul.
Or at death
who wants to make her a mummy.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“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)
“For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the wild animals may eat. You shall do the same with your vineyard, and with your olive orchard.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 23:10,11.