Recurrence of a lunar phase

The day of the full moon occurs on the 16th of this month (Nov '05).
When will it next fall on the same day of the month? In other words,
how often does a particular phase of the moon occur on a particular day
of a given month?

Michael wrote:
The day of the full moon occurs on the 16th of this month (Nov '05).
When will it next fall on the same day of the month? In other words,
how often does a particular phase of the moon occur on a particular day
of a given month?

You have to watch what local time you're using. A given lunar phase can
be on two different (but adjacent) calendar days depending on what time
zone you're located in.

The lunar month is approximately 29.5 days. The average calendar month
is approximately 30.4 days with the added confusion of months being 28
to 31 days in length. On most months a given lunar phase will occur
once with occasional cases of two times or zero times. So the chances
of a particular phase occurring on a particular day of the month (not
caring which month) is about 1 in 30 per month or every 2.5 years. The
next full moon on the 16th according to the chart below is Aug 16, 2008.
Occasional one will get skipped making it 5 years, and sometimes a
given phase can occur on the same day of two adjacent months, as on the
tenth of June and July of 2006.

This chart does a fair job of showing how the dates progress:
http://www.rogaining.com/moondates.html

For a specific lunar phase AND day of month AND calendar month expect
about 30 years between events.

If you want to calculate such dates exactly get a good ephemeris
computer program. If you go back in time you'll run into the added
complication that western calendars prior to the time of Pope Gregory
were not well defined.

Michael wrote:
The day of the full moon occurs on the 16th of this month (Nov '05).
When will it next fall on the same day of the month? In other words,
how often does a particular phase of the moon occur on a particular day
of a given month?

There are on average 12.368 lunations per year and 12.000 months.
Therefore the phase of the moon drifts by .368 of a month per year which
means it repeats on average every 1/.368 years or 2.72 years.

--
Ray Tomes
http://ray.tomes.biz/
http://www.cyclesresearchinstitute.org/