Full moon 29 or 30 days long. A full moon is often thought of as an event of a full night's duration. This is somewhat misleading because its phase seen from Earth continuously waxes or wanes (though much too slowly to notice in real time with the naked eye). Its maximum illumination occurs at the moment waxing has stopped. For any given location, about half of these maximum full moons may be visible, while the other half occurs during the day, when the full moon is below the horizon. Many almanacs list full moons not only by date, but also by their
Equinox Iranian calendars as Nowruz (means new day), while the autumnal equinox (September) marks the beginning of autumn. When Julius Caesar established the Julian calendar in 45 BC, he set 25 March as the date of the spring equinox; this was already the starting day of the year in the Persian and Indian calendars. Because the Julian year is longer than the tropical year by about 11.3 minutes on average (or 1 day in 128 years), the calendar "drifted" with respect to the two equinoxes — so that in AD 300 the spring equinox occurred on about 21 March, and by