Cycle Length
However, regardless of the culture, all lunar months approximate the mean length of the synodic month, or how long it takes to pass through each phase (new, half, full moon) and back again. It takes 29.53059 days (29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 3 seconds). Interestingly, the moon finishes its orbit around the earth in 27.3 days, but it has not finished a full cycle until it reaches the point in its orbit where the sun is in the same position.
Read more about this topic: Lunar Month
Famous quotes containing the words cycle and/or length:
“The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.”
—Robert M. Pirsig (b. 1928)
“When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men will at length establish their lives on that basis.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)