One Month Later...

I was out right at sunset checking out my neighbor's saguaro buds for flowers (look for a future post!), when I saw the nearly full moon rising over a couple palm trees on the street behind our house.  It reminded me of the moonrise on eclipse night exactly 29 days ago (14 April).  While the moon takes 27.3 days to circle the earth (the sidereal month), because during that time we've also been circling the sun, it takes an additional 2 days to move back into the same phase relative to the sun (the synoptic month).  So while the full moon last month occurred about Midnight, full moon here will happen about noon tomorrow, the aforementioned 29.5 days!

There is another difference from the full moon a month ago that I tried to explain in the prequel post to the eclipse - there won't be a lunar eclipse this month because of the inclination of the moon's orbit has moved the moon above the ecliptic plane.  So it won't intersect the earth's shadow so no eclipse...  If the moon's inclination was zero, there would be a lunar eclipse every month, and at noon tomorrow, Europe would be enjoying a lunar eclipse during our midday.  No such luck though - the next lunar eclipse won't be visible until October...