The Moons over York

The moons are a delight to astronomers. The major moon has a period of 28 days exactly and is locked in equatorial orbit. The minor moon has a period of a quarter day (exactly). This makes telling time easy, just look at the minor moon. Since time is easy to tell, so is longitude. The year has 13 months of 28 days, for a 364 day year.

Time is set here counting from York. We can determine the size of the realm and the set rise and set times for various parts of it from there.

At the longitude of York:

	Rises	Full	Sets
	10:30	12:00	1:30	(PM)	First moon
	 4:30	 6:00	7:30	(PM)	Second moon
	10:30	12:00	1:30	(AM)	Third moon
	 4:30	 6:00	7:30	(AM)	Fourth moon

While the numbering doesn't make much sense (most folks would call third moon fourth moon) it is universal. That is, half a globe away, when it's third moon in York at 1:00 in the morning it's also third moon in wherever at 1:00 in the afternoon.

At night you can count the minutes with surveyor's gear, and you can use a simple 60-30 triangle to count an hour or a half hour. The minor moon clocks out a degree a minute (60 degrees an hour).

There is a contraption used by royal surveyors (as it is horridly expensive to make accurate) which given the time can sight the minor moon along one globe, the major moon along another, and give very accurate longitude and latitude readings. These can be jury rigged with varying degrees of accuracy.

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