melannen: Commander Valentine of Alpha Squad Seven, a red-haired female Nick Fury in space, smoking contemplatively (Default)
melannen ([personal profile] melannen) wrote 2021-03-12 07:24 pm (UTC)

Growing up under a solar calendar, in a place that both has a ton of light pollution (so you can't really see moonlight) and a lot of tall trees (so you can only see the actual moon a few hours a night, if you're lucky, most places) meant it took me a long time to realize just how truly practical a lunar calendar is when you can actually see the moon and use the moonlight. One of the things that I learned new in that book is that really up to the start of the 20th century, even Christian Britain still had a lot of contracts that were timed to observations of moon phase!

I don't think I've even seen someone practically work out what might be important to a lunar calendar in a place with multiple moons though. People will run the math for phases but they're less likely to think about what amounts of light would be useful for doing things, or what would be easiest to observe and calculate on the fly.

Post a comment in response:

If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting

If you are unable to use this captcha for any reason, please contact us by email at support@dreamwidth.org