Lunar month with the Sun one or two days before that evening ("e.g.", in the Islamic calendar). In ancient Egypt the lunar month began on the day when the waning moon could no longer be seen just before sunrise. Others use calculation, of varying degrees of sophistication, "e.g.", the Hebrew calendar or the ecclesiastical lunar calendar. Yet others run from full moon to full moon. Calendars count integer days, so months may be 29 or 30 days in length, in some regular or irregular sequence. In India the month from conjunction to conjunction is divided into thirty parts known as "tithis". The
Lunar month The nodes of the Moon's orbit precesses 360° in about 6,798 days (18.6 years). A draconic month is shorter than a sidereal month because the nodes precess in the opposite direction to that in which the Moon is orbiting Earth, one rotation every 18.6 years. Therefore, the Moon returns to the same node slightly earlier than it returns to meet the same reference star. Regardless of the culture, all lunar months approximate the mean length of the synodic month, the average period the Moon takes to cycle through its phases (new, first quarter, full, last quarter) and back again: 29–30