Alt text: They're up there with coral islands, lightning, and caterpillars turning into butterflies.
this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2025
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Can you provide a source for 14 orbits? Everything in my search results says 13 and some change.
Wikipedia says one sidereal month is 27.321661 days and a sidereal year is 365.256 days.
365.256/27.321661 ≈ 13.37
No. A sidereal year is 366.24 days.
And 11 days isn't "and some change"
The figures in my post are ephemeris days since that's the way Wikipedia lists them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidereal_year
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_month#Sidereal_month
"And some change" is a phrase to refer to a number following a decimal point, meaning the sources I find claim there are thirteen point something sidereal months per year, at a figure too low to round to 14. Here are some example sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_of_the_Moon#Lunar_periods
http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=1126
I still can't find a source which says the moon makes 14 sidereal orbits per year, using any definition of year.