Lunisolar Calendar 2006
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- Can you even imagine time without breaking it up
into seven-day weeks?
- Would you like to be more in touch with the seasons, planets,
moon, and stars?
- Are you
tired of calendars that often list the moon's quarters on the wrong days,
because they're set for a far-away time zone and don't bother to
correct for North American longitudes?
Click on the calendar page below to see this month's lunisolar calendar full size.
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This lunisolar calendar was last published in 2005.
This calendar is astronomical rather than astrological in approach. Each
lunation, new moon to new moon, gets its own page, like the standard
month calendar, but with the weeks replaced by quarters. (Quarter
lengths vary from 6
to 9 days long.) Each day is an approximately one inch square to
write in, with the gregorian date and day of week marked in each one,
plus a small picture approximating the appearance of the moon on that
date and information on assorted holidays and astronomical events of interest.
Why is this a lunisolar calendar, rather than a lunar calendar?
A true lunar calendar is not corrected to the earth's motion around the
sun, so the months range around the entire year, as time passes. The
only major calendar of this sort I know is the Islamic calendar; each
month has its turn at every different season of the year.
The Hebrew, Chinese,
European, and Native American traditions include intercalary months,
which serve the same purpose as the "leap day", February 29, which
keeps the Gregorian calendar from getting out of synchronization with
the seasons. The scheme that I'm using centers the moon on the
autumnal equinox, much like the Hebrew calendar which, every year, has
its new year, coincidentally, at the beginning of our Harvest
moon.
Where do the lunation names come from?
The names come from northeastern US traditions, most of them
apparently derived from the Algonquin tribe. The exact names
I use were the ones used by the original Old Farmer's
Almanac for many years, though in the last decade or so they've
become more creative and use different names, varying from year to
year. The Algonquins apparently did use various names,
though it is unclear whether this variation was geographical
or used to differentiate one year from another. Other Native
American tribes used many different names. The Lakota names,
for example, center around the yearly cycle of the life of
the buffalo, for obvious reasons.
How do you know which name applies to which lunation?
The full moon which is closest to the autumnal equinox is the
Harvest moon, which is followed, in order, by the Hunter's moon, the
Beaver moon, the Cold moon, the Wolf moon, the Snow moon, the Sap
moon, the Pink moon (referring to flowers rather than the color, I
think), the Flower moon, the Strawberry moon, the Buck moon, the
Sturgeon moon, and, only when necessary, the Corn moon. The Corn moon
appears only in years in which the lunation following the Sturgeon
moon is too early to contain the autumnal equinox; 1998 is one example of
such a year.
More details on this Lunisolar calendar
A description of
where and when the planets may be seen in the sky is given for each month,
along with major meteor showers, etc. Planetary conjunctions and the
like are also noted. Everything possible is corrected to US Central Time,
rather than the standard Greenwich mean time.
Major Christian, Pagan, Jewish, Chinese, and Islamic
holidays are included, as well as those Hindu holidays whose dates I
could ascertain. Each lunation is named according to Northeastern US
traditions, and equivalents to the Hebrew, Islamic, and Chinese
lunar calendars are also noted for each month, along with the exact
North American start dates of the Hebrew and Islamic calendar months,
which vary slightly from the astronomical new moon.
The Lunar Calendar and Pregnancy
Can I use a lunar calendar to predict when my baby will be born? If it's your first baby, your best bet is to try counting forward nine lunar months, and then forward by three lunar quarters; for a second or later baby, try nine and a half lunations, plus one day.
On average, your first baby will be born 274 days after conception, or approximately 288 days after the start of the last menstrual period. Later babies are born, on average, 269 days after the actual date of conception, or 283 days after the start of the last menstrual period. (Reference: Obstet Gynecol. 1990 Jun;75(6):929-32.) This is considerably longer than the usual estimate of 280 days! No wonder it seems that the majority of women have babies that are officially overdue. 288 days is approximately nine and three-quarters lunar months, since a lunar month is approximately 29.53 days long. When people claim that a pregnancy is exactly 10 lunar months, they are making the mistake of calculating a lunar month to be 28 days long.
Are more babies born at the full moon? No, the full moon does not appear to have any effect on labor. In fact, when my first baby was due, the moon was full, but the labor department of the hospital was nearly empty. When he was actually born, one week later, at the third quarter of the moon, the hospital was full! Interestingly, it seems that the barometric pressure might be related to when babies are born, with more babies being born after the barometric pressure drops, during a big storm, as though a drop in the barometer sometimes triggers labor.
Can I use a lunar calendar to predict my baby's sex? No, there is no relationship whatsoever between conception or birth date and the baby's sex, regardless of which calendar is used for the calculation. The old claim that the Chinese lunar calendar can be used to predict whether you will have a boy or a girl is entirely fictitious. Sorry! (I was silly enough to try it for both of my babies; both were predicted to be girls, and both turned out to be boys.)
Copyright
This calendar is copyrighted by the author and must not be
copied onto other web pages or into other calendars without
permission. Use made of information obtained from this page
should be properly footnoted, with a reference to this
page. Links to this page
(http://www.pburch.net/lunarcal.html) are always welcome, and may make use of one of
the tiny pictures currently visible on this page, if you wish.
More questions?
Please do not write to me asking me when the full moon is, or anything else
that is easily answered simply by looking at the files
presented here!
Lunar phases for dates in the past or future
If you need to know the lunar phase on any
particular date, in the past or future, I strongly recommend
the use of the US Navy's Virtual
Reality Moon Phase Pictures page, which will calculate
the phase for you on the fly.
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Page created: December 12, 1997
Last updated:December 1, 2005
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