getFullMoon

getFullMoon -- return previous and next full moon

Description

Array getFullMoon (longint $TIMESTAMP);

getFullMoon returns the unix timestamp for the next and the previous full moon according to the given timestamp. For the next (previous) full moon absolutely either state the current unix timestamp or the value "now".

getFullMoon will return a mostly exact value of the moon phase nevertheless the irregularity of moon´s orbit behavior. It is based on data calculated by Dr. Husfeld who used the astronomical algorithms of Meeus (Barth, 1992) to determinate them, published on the website of the Munich Astronomical Archive http://www.maa.agleia.de by Christine Kronberg who permits the use for noncomercial purposes. The deviation within the time 1970 to 2037 will be less then one minute! In addition there will be a little confusion about a lot of different astronomical time systems (e.g. "JDE" "UT", "UT1", "UT2", "UTC", "GMT", "TAI ") which differ from each other for example in a leap second, others in something about one minute, considering them you have to calculate a total deviation of approximate two minutes.

The valid range for getFullMoon is the time within the unix epoche therefore the first full moon took place on 1970-01-22 12:56 (was there already life before?) and the last will be 2036-12-3 14:10.

getFullMoon returns an array with 2 indexes:

• "last" - contains last full moon as an unix timestamp
• "next" - contains next full moon as an unix timestamp