The Fifteenth Lantern Festival of the First Month is coming, is the moon round on that day? The Jiefang Daily Shangguan News reporter learned from the Shanghai Planetarium that the moon will rise at about 16:30 on February 15, but this year's Lantern Festival moon is not very round, because the full moon appears on the seventeenth day of the first lunar month.
Lantern is the first important festival after the Spring Festival, China is vast, the customs of this festival are not the same throughout the country, but usually indispensable to moon viewing, lantern viewing, guessing, dragon dance, lion dance, eating Lantern and other activities.
On February 12, at the Lianyungang Museum, children were making tangyuan versions of "ice piers". Xinhua News Agency
The fifteenth day of the first lunar month is usually the day of the first full moon of the lunar new year, but this lunar new month, the full moon appears at about 1 a.m. on February 17, which is the seventeenth day of the first lunar month. Shi Wei, director of the Network Science Popularization Department of the Shanghai Planetarium, explained that the new moon is called "Shuo" in astronomy, which means that the moon and the sun are in the same direction, about 0 degrees apart; the full moon is called "look" in astronomy, which means that the angle between the moon and the sun is about 180 degrees apart. Strictly speaking, both "Shuo" and "Wang" refer to a certain moment. Because the orbital period of the Moon's orbit is not very stable, the length of the period of a "synodic moon" has been changing slightly, averaging 29.5306 days.
According to reports, the moon's orbit around the earth is an elliptical, near and far, more than 360,000 kilometers in the nearest time, and more than 400,000 kilometers at the farthest. Due to gravity, the moon travels faster in the near future and slower in the distance. If it runs fast in the first half of the month, the moon will reach the position of the full moon on the fourteenth or fifteenth of the lunar calendar, taking on a perfectly round shape in the night sky; if it runs slowly, the moon will reach the position of the full moon on the sixteenth or seventeenth of the lunar calendar.
On September 21 last year, tourists enjoyed the moon at the Chengqing Gate Tower in the ancient city of Jiande Yanzhou, Zhejiang Province. Xinhua News Agency
According to the lunar calendar, the day on which the new moon (Shuo) is located is the first day of the first lunar month. The full moon may occur on any day of the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth or seventeenth lunar calendar, mainly concentrated on the fifteenth and sixteenth lunar calendars, and the probability of the seventeenth full moon of the lunar calendar is about 15%. This year, in addition to February 17, which is a full moon, there will also be a seventeen full moon on April 17.