If you’re like me, you try to be a careful programmer. So it makes you nervous when you see random code scattered across the internet that purports to solve a complex astronomical problem, but doesn’t explain why the solution is correct.
You believe that there must be authoritative sources such as books which contain careful, and complete, solutions. For instance:
Meeus, Jean. Astronomical Algorithms. Richmond: Willmann-Bell, 1991. ISBN 0-943396-35-2.
Duffett-Smith, Peter. Practical Astronomy With Your Calculator. 3rd ed. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981. ISBN 0-521-28411-2.
You place your trust in widely-used, well-tested, open source libraries which can have their errors corrected (unlike static web pages). Here then, is a Python solution to your question based on the PyEphem library, using the Phases of the Moon interface.
#!/usr/bin/python
import datetime
import ephem
from typing import List, Tuple
def get_phase_on_day(year: int, month: int, day: int):
"""Returns a floating-point number from 0-1. where 0=new, 0.5=full, 1=new"""
#Ephem stores its date numbers as floating points, which the following uses
#to conveniently extract the percent time between one new moon and the next
#This corresponds (somewhat roughly) to the phase of the moon.
#Use Year, Month, Day as arguments
date = ephem.Date(datetime.date(year,month,day))
nnm = ephem.next_new_moon(date)
pnm = ephem.previous_new_moon(date)
lunation = (date-pnm)/(nnm-pnm)
#Note that there is a ephem.Moon().phase() command, but this returns the
#percentage of the moon which is illuminated. This is not really what we want.
return lunation
def get_moons_in_year(year: int) -> List[Tuple[ephem.Date, str]]:
"""Returns a list of the full and new moons in a year. The list contains tuples
of either the form (DATE,'full') or the form (DATE,'new')"""
moons=[]
date=ephem.Date(datetime.date(year,1,1))
while date.datetime().year==year:
date=ephem.next_full_moon(date)
moons.append( (date,'full') )
date=ephem.Date(datetime.date(year,1,1))
while date.datetime().year==year:
date=ephem.next_new_moon(date)
moons.append( (date,'new') )
#Note that previous_first_quarter_moon() and previous_last_quarter_moon()
#are also methods
moons.sort(key=lambda x: x[0])
return moons
print(get_phase_on_day(2013,1,1))
print(get_moons_in_year(2013))
This returns
0.632652265318
[(2013/1/11 19:43:37, 'new'), (2013/1/27 04:38:22, 'full'), (2013/2/10 07:20:06, 'new'), (2013/2/25 20:26:03, 'full'), (2013/3/11 19:51:00, 'new'), (2013/3/27 09:27:18, 'full'), (2013/4/10 09:35:17, 'new'), (2013/4/25 19:57:06, 'full'), (2013/5/10 00:28:22, 'new'), (2013/5/25 04:24:55, 'full'), (2013/6/8 15:56:19, 'new'), (2013/6/23 11:32:15, 'full'), (2013/7/8 07:14:16, 'new'), (2013/7/22 18:15:31, 'full'), (2013/8/6 21:50:40, 'new'), (2013/8/21 01:44:35, 'full'), (2013/9/5 11:36:07, 'new'), (2013/9/19 11:12:49, 'full'), (2013/10/5 00:34:31, 'new'), (2013/10/18 23:37:39, 'full'), (2013/11/3 12:49:57, 'new'), (2013/11/17 15:15:44, 'full'), (2013/12/3 00:22:22, 'new'), (2013/12/17 09:28:05, 'full'), (2014/1/1 11:14:10, 'new'), (2014/1/16 04:52:10, 'full')]