NOV 30, 2009 - Lunar Standstills is an excellent article by Jean Elliott at Deborah Houlding's very fine Skyscript website (which was the featured April 22, 2002 Website of the Week). Lunar Standstills dates back to 2005, and would have been a handy reference for me the year before, when I was writing my 2005 World Forecast Highlights. At that time, I was focusing on the lunar declination extreme of 2005-2006, and its connection with seismic and storm cycles (among other things). You remember 2005-2006: Hurricane Katrina. And the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami was close enough to count, occuring in the last few days of 2004. Elliott's article excels in an experiential sense, describing how the peak declination lunar standstills look in the sky; and how the ancient megalithic builders came to regard them as so very important. (The full moons nearest the solstices are highest in the sky at lunar standstills, which come about every 18.6 years or so.) We've fallen quite some way since the lunar declination extremes of 2005-2006, and we're now coming up on what Elliott calls the minor lunar standstill season of 2015, when the solstice full moons will be lowest in the sky. (For a graphic illustration of the lunar declination cycle, see my 2006 World Forecast Highlights.)
