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)
“Baltimore lay very near the immense protein factory of Chesapeake Bay, and out of the bay it ate divinely. I well recall the time when prime hard crabs of the channel species, blue in color, at least eight inches in length along the shell, and with snow-white meat almost as firm as soap, were hawked in Hollins Street of Summer mornings at ten cents a dozen.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)