Moon Calendar: Lunar Phases

Moon Calendar: Lunar Phases
One of the most widely used moon calendar is the Islamic calendar or also known as the Hijri calendar. The calendar consists of 12 months, based on the typical system of the lunar year. The Islamic calendar structure has one schematic theory that is the calendar is not connected to the seasons thus separating every solar year of about 11 to 12 days. Upon the drift, the calendar will return to its position it once held during the solar year specifically every 33 recorded years of the Islamic time. This Hijri calendar was predominantly used during the ancient years for religious reasons. Due to the vast modernization and great influence of other religious calendars, it is now only a reference for Islamic followers.   Apart from the Hijri calendar, the moon calendar of other types is categorized as the lunisolar calendars. Lunisolar implies that the months are arranged systematically on a lunar rotation but the intercalary months are included into the cycle to bring them lunar arrangement into harmonization with the solar year. As there are roughly 12 synodic months or also referred to as lunations within one solar year, the interval of 354.37 days is often labeled as the lunatic year. Examples of the lunisolar calendars are the Hebrew, Chinese, Hindu and other relic ones used during the ancient times.  These calendars have uneven number of months within a year considering a year cannot be perfectly divisible by an exact figure hence the seasons would eventually drift year by year.   There are also moon calendar that are regulated by the yearly natural occurrences. The events are affected by the lunar rotations and the solar cycle. One obvious example is the Banks Islands calendar that includes three months during the course when palolo worms mass on the beaches. Due to the fact that the palolos' reproductive cycles are synchronized with the moon, these events often take place during the final period of the lunar month. In respect to every different type of calendars, they do differ in the first day of the month. For instance, the Chinese calendar fixes the day when the astronomical new moon appears to be the first day of the month. The length of the month also varies, to the extent that some religions conduct observations to fix the date.
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