Moon phases on your iCal
This program can no longer be downloaded. You can look for alternatives in Calendars & Planners for Mac.
Curious as to the different phases of the moon? You can install this Moon Phase Calendar for iCal to keep track of them.
The calendar is for the period from 2008 to 2015 and will give you both the name and percentage of a moon cycle. For example 75% is disseminating and 25% waxing crescent. Moon Phase Calendar is essentially an ICS file, which you will need to save somewhere where your sure not to lose it. Double click on it to launch it in iCal. You’ll then have to select which calendar to associate it to.
It would have been nice to see a bit more information in the Moon Phase Calendar, like some details of the different moon cycles or an image of what the moon looks like during one of them. Still, Moon Phase Calendar is very simple to add to your iCal and doesn’t take much space either. You can even edit the events if you wish to add your own details or an alarm.
Moon Phase Calendar adds the moon cycles to your iCal calendar.
Download a detailed Moon Phase Calendar for 2008 – 2015, giving you exact dates and times of all major moon phases.
You may have personally observed that the moon goes through a complete moon phases cycle in about one month. That’s true, but it’s not exactly one month. The synodic period or lunation is exactly 29.5305882 days. It’s the time required for the moon to move to the same position as seen by an observer on earth. If you were to view the moon cycling the earth from outside our solar system (the viewpoint of the stars), the time required is 27.3217 days, roughly two days less. This figure is called the sidereal period or orbital period.
Why is the synodic period different from the sidereal period? The short answer is because we see the sunlit moon from a slowly moving position: the earth! During the moon cycle, the earth has moved approximately one month along its year-long orbit around the sun, altering our angle of viewpoint, and thus, the phase. The earth’s orbital direction is such that it lengthens the period for earthbound observers.
