Monitoring The Moon

[ramonmercado]

Monitoring the Moon
30 September 2005

One of the UK's leading research labs and the Muslim Council of Britain have launched a project to improve our knowledge of the lunar calendar as part of Einstein Year. The Moon Watch project encourages the general public - especially amateur astronomers and the Islamic community - to record when they see the new crescent moon and enter the details on a web site. The exercise should help create more accurate lunar records, which could benefit religions that use the lunar calendar to set important dates.


Moon Watch is being launched to coincide with Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, which is expected to start on 4 or 5 October. The Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC) is asking people to look for the new crescent moon immediately after sunset in the western sky on the first three days after the new moon. This will fall between 4 to 6 October, 3 to 5 November and 2 to 4 December.

Participants can look at the moon using the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope and can then submit their results to a special website (see "Crescent Moon Watch" in related links). These data will be analysed by staff at the HM Nautical Almanac Office (HMNAO), who will use the results to refine existing astronomical models. The project is planned to run for several years, with the first results being released in December 2005.

"This is a great opportunity to get the public to help us answer the age-old question of when the new crescent moon can be seen," says Steven Bell, who is scientific editor for the HMNAO at the CCLRC's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford. "Current methods for predicting the new crescent moon are based on data in an American study. We want to gather observations worldwide and particularly from Northern Europe to test the validity of our predictions and improve our global models."

In addition to helping Muslims set the date for Ramadan each year, the project will also help other religions - including the Christian, Jewish and Hindu faiths - that base important festivals on the lunar calendar.

http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/9/9/18/1

 

[Ermintruder]

This calendar month, January 2018, there will be two full moons, on the 2nd and the 31st.

I have no idea how often the precise calendrical and astronomical cogs conspire to effect this false abundance, but on checking my desk diary for last year, it didn't happen once.

So: if you're a werewolf, literal lunatic, or a big-time selenophiliac, January will already be a busy month. The corollary of this somewhat circular observation, being (I suppose) that you can have February off?

Does this multi-moon-month have any especial astrological significance? Or are all you horoscopical people sideral sophisticates, who laugh at such an inference?

Pray wax on, cresent your opinions, and lighten all of our ways: irrespective of your own planetary preferences.

 

[GNC]

If you're that obsessed with the Moon you'll be going by the lunar calendar, which presumably always has one full moon a month?

 

[Ermintruder]

If you're that obsessed with the Moon you'll be going by the lunar calendar, which presumably always has one full moon a month?

Well, for people that are obsessed with the moon (I'm not)....do you do this? Follow a truly-lunar calendar, I mean

 

[EnolaGaia]

This calendar month, January 2018, there will be two full moons, on the 2nd and the 31st. ...

It will happen again in March of this year.

This is the standard example of a 'blue moon' (as in "once in a blue moon"), though it's defined two different ways:

- a second full moon event within a single calendar month (the second being the 'blue moon')

- four full moon events within a single calendar season (where, for some reason, the third of the four is the 'blue moon').

The former definition is the most popular one nowadays, even though it derives from an erroneous description from a 1946 article in Sky & Telescope magazine.

https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/moon/blue-moon.html

 

[Krepostnoi]

Well, for people that are obsessed with the moon (I'm not)....do you do this? Follow a truly-lunar calendar, I mean

I don't know about being obsessed with the moon, but folks round here are getting quite excited for the Lunar New Year in a couple or three weeks. Much more so than for the dull 31 December > 1 January business that seems to be a big deal further West. (And of course we have overlooked my own favourite annual calendar event: Old New Year, on Jan 12-13). So, yes, I think a substantial portion of the world does follow a lunar calendar.

 

[Ermintruder]

This is the standard example of a 'blue moon' (as in "once in a blue moon"), though it's defined two different ways:

Fascinating- I totally-swear that I knew none of this, at all. I was simply looking last night at our printed wallplanner in the kitchen at home, at the solitary Jan 2018 strip, appended to the now-obsolete 2017 year preceding it. I thought I could see moon-shaped symbols on the January 2018 section, and thought initially, "ah, someone's doodled-in a second full moon this month". Then on closer examination, I saw it was a proper situation....

I had no idea what an astronomical blue moon was, in the slightest, although obviously I'm familiar with the idiomatic saying.

I'm also amazed to discover that the upcoming 31 January 2018 second full moon will actually be a Red Blue sub-Supermoon (based upon further details from your link @EnolaGaia - many thanks for having provided all this information, as ever).

How amazing is that?? Had I not been eating an unauthorised cracker just before midnight, none of this would've come to light. I truly have not heard any mention about an upcoming special moon from any other source- perhaps everyone else in the wider world is still recovering from 2017, and current horrible weather.

folks round here are getting quite excited for the Lunar New Year in a couple or three weeks

The what?? You also have me totally-amazed by this, @Krepostnoi.... are you saying that the Lunar New Year (a new concept for me in itself) begins on, what, 31 Jan?? With the full moon that I've/we've just established is a blue moon? Or do you mean once that full moon starts to wane?

And what do русский лунный дурак exactly do, to celebrate a Lunar New Year? I presume it will include lots of водка & борщ (I always fall-back onto national stereotypes when it comes to big celebrations, and my narrow-mindedness has never let me down so far).

But much more importantly...why does this get observed so much in Russia? Pagan traditions? Orthodox Church? Islamic link? Easter prep maybe? (since Easter is a lunalogical holy festival, across Christianity...shhh). This is all just sheer conjecture on my part...but all very interesting nevertheless

 

[Min Bannister]

Very interesting. I hadn't heard of the seasonal blue moon before. And I didn't know there was a (monthly) blue moon this month, never mind two this year. Awesome, thanks for bringing this up Erm!

I don't think Ho Chi Minh is in Russia though.

 

[Ermintruder]

I don't think Ho Chi Minh is in Russia though.

Ah, so my narrow-minded national stereotyping has let me down, has it? Well, my geography, more like. Are we saying that our man in the Eastern office, @Krepostnoi , has orienteered himself even more into the orient than I had been hitherto aware thereof?

I do now recollect that there was a situational situation abrewing at Kamp Krepos... did tha' decide to go east, then, young man?

Now that makes more sense, dunnit? Chinese Lunar New Year? Yes, I could imagine that could be a big deal, there (significantly more than in Cherepovets Prospekt, da?)

EDIT "did tha' decide to go east, then, young man?" (in fact, easter?)

 

[Min Bannister]

Ah, so my narrow-minded national stereotyping has let me down, has it? Well, my geography, more like. Are we saying that our man in the Eastern office, @Krepostnoi , has orienteered himself even more into the orient than I had been hitherto aware thereof?

It is in his "location" but sometimes people fib in that box. It is true that Russia is so huge that it is both east and west at the same time which gets a bit confusing but I have been under the impression Mr K does live somewhere even more exotic than that.

 

[Ermintruder]

It is in his "location" but sometimes people fib in that box

I'd entirely-forgotten that such a capability existed, and I bow to your inestimable powers of digital sorcery.

And I suppose it's possible, many moons ago, that @Krepostnoi may have entered a geonominal inexactitude into that information field. But I'm going to bet on your original interpretation being both contemporary & nearly correct.

Because moons must mean much more to Chinese citizens than to Russians: surely?

 

[Min Bannister]

Because moons must mean much more to Chinese citizens than to Russians: surely

You would think so. I don't know much about Vietnam but the Wikipedia entry says that it has been quite strongly influenced by Chinese culture as you would expect given they are next door neighbours. Who started it and spread it to whom would be harder to figure out though!
Ooh, the entry on Lunar Calendars says the earliest known one is from Scotland!

The earliest known lunar calendar was found at Warren Field in Scotland and has been dated to c. 8000bc, during its Mesolithic period.[1]Some scholars argue for lunar calendars still further back—Rappenglück in the marks on a c. 17,000 year-old cave painting at Lascauxand Marshack in the marks on a c. 27,000 year-old bone baton—but their findings remain controversial.[2][3]

 

[maximus otter]

Super: After 1,400 years of muslims successfully determining the date of Ramadan all by themselves, a government agency now wants thousands of SJWs with binoculars to chip in their ten penn’orth. Will they all be required to sing “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect har-mo-nee” while so doing?

l now look forward to the Muslim Council of Muslim Councils for Muslims volunteering to assist Christians in the observations necessary to determine the date of Easter:



maximus otter

Edited to add: Just checked the date of the OP! l note that the alphabet-soup taxpayer-funded agency promoting PC skygazing has now changed its title to the “Science and Technology Facilities Council”. It still sounds like a cover name for the Man from UNCLE...

m.o.

 

[Krepostnoi]

It is in his "location" but sometimes people fib in that box. It is true that Russia is so huge that it is both east and west at the same time which gets a bit confusing but I have been under the impression Mr K does live somewhere even more exotic than that.

Ironically, compared with my previous entries in that field, the information about my current location is not only true, it's considerably less allusive and more direct. @Ermintruder 's assumption that I have moved unseasonably Easter is well-founded, although, as you say, Russia is so unfathomably huge that by the time you have finished going East, you're pretty much West again. Certainly, although I am very much in the Far East of the imagination, if you think in terms of physical geography rather than psychogeography there are great swathes of Russia yet further to the east that mean we are still positively occidental in comparison with Vladivostok ("Power over the East") or the like.

And here's a poser: I spent 6 months in Russia over the course of 2017. I have spent 31 years out of the past 44 devoted to studying Russian language and culture, but on the strength of recent experience, I have no desire ever to set foot in the country again. The question "Now what?" has a heft belying its brevity...

 

[Ermintruder]

the strength of recent experience, I have no desire ever to set foot in the country again

That is both unfortunate and worrying. Stay safe, in every sense of that overused word. I have every expectation that what one finds at the middle of many a Matryoshka is not as nice as might've been hoped for. My long-gone colleagues that headed out to Nizhny Novgorod for a commercial slice of Gorby's glasnost came back many years older than just the clock time they were away.

The question "Now what?" has a heft belying its brevity...

Very much so... :-/

Annoyingly, the old saying "east, west, hame's best" is not only (usually) true, it's often not wrong either. Not necessarily as a permanent retreat from Москва (or other easter locales) but even just as an opportunity to regroup/recharge/reassess.

I've always said: predestination isn't all they make it out to be, and planning is for wimps (but that's never got me anywhere- financially or domicillary)

 

[AgProv]

If you're that obsessed with the Moon you'll be going by the lunar calendar, which presumably always has one full moon a month?

If a month with 31 days can in theory have two full moons, can it be the case that every so often, you might get a February with none? Just thinking aloud here...

 

[EnolaGaia]

If a month with 31 days can in theory have two full moons, can it be the case that every so often, you might get a February with none? Just thinking aloud here...

Yes - and next month is an example ...

https://astrobob.areavoices.com/2018/01/14/a-february-without-a-full-moon/

 

[EnolaGaia]

Here's a tidbit on how often a full-moon-less February occurs ...

... But what about a month with no Moon at all? That is a bit more rare than a Blue Moon (which happens on average every 3 1/2 years), and a “No-Moon” month happens about once every 19 years. The last time February didn’t have a full Moon was in 1999 and then again in 1980.

SOURCE: https://www.farmersalmanac.com/astronomy/2017/12/28/full-moon-february/