Lunar cycle

[AGB]

Is there any way to show lunar cycles on the timeline?

I have pulled most of my timeline information across to Aeon Timeline now, but the phase of the moon on any given day is a key part of the setting in my novel and it would be good to not have to track this separately.

[AGB]

Also, I happen to use earth (with a bespoke calendar) in my fiction, so real world lunar cycle is what I’m after.

I don’t currently need it, but obviously it would be great for users to be able to define the periodicity of their own lunar cycles (and no doubt multiple moons…ARGH!).

Thanks

[jess]

I assume you are wanting the lunar cycle of an event to be automatically calculated based on its date? This isn’t currently available.
What you could do to track the lunar cycle would be to create a new list property that had all the lunar phases, and then you can manually set the phase for each of your events.
Or you potentially could use Calendar Markers, which allow you to mark certain times of the calendar, and can be repeated at defined intervals. You can also change the icon of these to ones that resemble moon phases.

[AGB]

Thanks Jess, I’ll try that.

[Peter_T]

I had the same problem and was able to solve it with Aeon Timeline 2 by introducing a “moon phase” field for the events, which puts the calculated moon phase. This is updated using a Python script.
This update doesn’t work with Aeon Timeline 3 because I can’t write the file format due to its complexity.

[Ncj700]

I’ve wrangled with the Lunar Cycle headache in Aeon a few times; So far, this is my best solution in Aeon3:

1. Make an Item Type For ‘Moonphases’. Make it Visible on the Timeline and Allow Dates, plus whatever relationships you want applicable.

2. Make 1 ‘Moonphase’ for whatever dates/times you require, but shove it as far back as possible on yoour timeline, way bfore it has any relevance to your current working zone. I tend to put mine at 4000 BC, etc.

   

3. If you’re using standard moon phases, if you tick off the ‘mark anniversary on timeline’ box, you can go into the markers and select moonphase symbols, and they will appear above your timeline.

4. You’ll have to repeat the cycle itself a few times and play with the event durations to get them to fit properly, depending on your timeline requirements. At present I have thirteen repetitions of the full cycle 8-Phase Moon Cycle (104 items total).
   Waxing & Waning Crescents and Gibbous Phases are 6 days 12 hours long. Quarters, Full and New Moons 12 hours in all but the thirteenth cycle. In the Final Cycle, my Full and New Moons are 1 day each. Thats not how it works IRL, but I had to get creative.

Obviously, if you aren’t using an IRL model, this doesn’t matter, but this was what I had to work with to fit the whole cycle into a year, and have my calendar markers, which are mainly how I refer to the phases when editing repeat on a regular setting without any overlap. A full IRL model is possible(ish), but I was less worried about realism in this story so much as being able to pin certain things in place, as I have relationships in events and characters that relate to such phases, so I needed them to be pretty accurate.

If you want to use this, I recommend making the Moonphases before you put the meat of the timeline in. Adding it to an existing timeline is also easy enough, but more aggravating in terms of reordering.

4. You can then turn off your ‘Moonphases’ visibility on the timeline, and the markers will still show. You can also use the same item type for similar markers. Mine also tracks Zodiac Signs, Pagan Holidays, and Celtic Astrology, so its a bit cluttered. If I could figure out how to stop my Chinese Zodiac Markers from overlapping, I’d have those visible too, but the way markers work, its impossible to adjust the frequency of the anniversary itself, so unfortunately no dice there.

Hope that helps. I had to go through a few different versions of this before I got anything useable so if anything doesn’t make sense feel free to ask Sorry there aren’t more Images; Aeon won’t let me put more than one up yet.

P.S.
Aeon Team, Can we please have the ability to customise the repetition cycle/frequency of anniversaries? Like, a little type-box to say the anniversary is every 12 years, or 1 year and 7 weeks, or 321 days and six seconds? Customisability like that would be great. IT WOULD SAVE SO MANY HEADACHES.

[Peter_T]

This looks quite interesting. If I understand you correctly, you are building a timeline with ready-made moon phase markers.

I can imagine that you can create a set of such markers via a script and insert them in the correct position in any Aeon3 template.
The template files for Aeon Timeline 3 are (in contrast to the project files as such) pure JSON files, which should be relatively easy to edit using a script.

[Ncj700]

That would be good, if I had any confidence whatsoever or knowledge on using scripts or anything like that. I can use very basic text formatting in HTML, but that’s as far as any coding goes on my part I’m afraid.

[Peter_T]

The JSON format is accessible with Python as a data set with nested dictionaries and lists, which only requires some very basic knowledge of the programming language.
However, my suggestion only applies if you can export markers to templates with Aeon Timeline 3. Is that possible?

[Ncj700]

Err… probably not? I understand only about 1/3 of all that

[Peter_T]

Sorry, I must have been thinking aloud.

However, it is definitely helpful to understand the concept of templates with Aeon Timeline because it helps a lot to reuse elements of the timeline setup.

[Ncj700]

Since writing the last method I use for Lunar Cycles, I’ve switched to a secondary one using Calendar Markers. The set up is still dated at a particular start point (again, I start it several thousand years before my actual timeline, and adjust the days if I want say, a full moon on a specific event until i have something i’m happy with.) For anyone else like me who sees the word ‘script’ and cries tears of fear, this is slightly easier than the first method, and declutters the timeline.

The dates provided in my examples are from my most recent timeline, so the day and month vill vary for anyone copying this method; the most important part is the duration and repetition cycles.

Gibbous & Crescent moons last for 1 week, 11 hours.
Quarter, Full, and New moons, and last 13 hours.

Technically, Quarter, Full and New moons only last an instant, but the overlap on the calendar is gets too cluttered for that, and this was rough enough to simulate a basic moon cycle. It doesn’t match perfectly because of the 0.something-not-a-round number that moon cycles exist in. By making the respective phases last these durations, it made it closer to a natural cycle. It’s not perfect, but I am not a techie with scripts or what not, so I’m simply offering a revision to my past process.

For example, this is how the first cycle on my current calendar is filled in in the inspector:

1. Waxing Crescent
Start & End: Fri 12 Jan 2777 BC 7:00
(No Duration Entered)
Repeats: Every 384 Days

2. First Quarter
Start & End: Fri 19 Jan 2777 BC 18:00
(No Duration Entered)
Repeats: Every 384 Days

3. Waxing Gibbous
Start & End: Sat 20 Jan 2777 BC 7:00
(No Duration Entered)
Repeats: Every 384 Days

4. Full Moon
Start & End: Sat 27 Jan 2777 BC 18:00
(No Duration Entered)
Repeats: Every 384 Days

5. Waning Gibbous
Start & End: Sun 28 Jan 2777 BC 7:00
(No Duration Entered)
Repeats: Every 384 Days

6. Last Quarter
Start & End: Sun 4 Feb 2777 BC 18:00
(No Duration Entered)
Repeats: Every 384 Days

7. Waning Crescent
Start & End: Mon 5 Feb 2777 BC 7:00
(No Duration Entered)
Repeats: Every 384 Days

8. New Moon
Start & End: Mon 12 Feb 2777 BC 18:00
(No Duration Entered)
Repeats: Every 384 Days

Repeat 11 more times, adjusting the dates as you go until you have twelve repetitions, using the same durations as mentioned previously: Gibbous & Crescent moons last for 1 week, 11 hours; Quarter, Full, and New moons, and last 13 hours.

If it helps, making temporary items on the timeline to the durations mentioned makes the process much simpler, or showing the duration in the marker itself (that was too cluttered for me, since I also have Zodiac Years, and Microseasons as calendar markers, but using an event for visualisation helped in setting my first timeline up, so either method will probably be helpful to some when plotting on your respective timelines).

The repetition has to be done for each seperate phase, and it is important that it is in DAYS. Putting the repetition at every 1 year WILL cause overlap as there will be more phases than there are days in the year (again, a true lunar cycle is not concurrent with calendar days or years). I speak from painful experience. Make sure the repetition is every 384 DAYS.

This is a tedious process, not unlike the first method, since it means a lot of individual markers, and speaking from experience, a little bit of a pain to add into an existing timeline. It can be done though. It’s just tedious. I highly recommend starting this on a blank one, and saving the blank document with the calendar markers as a template. It means only going through the pain once.

I like to use the emojis in the names because the Aeon Timeline icons for the moon phases invert between dark and light modes, which, when the moon icons are meant to represent specific cycles, is a little too annoying to be wholly reliable (ie: what was Last Quarter in Light Mode becomes First Quarter in Dark Mode if I don’t hover over the icon to check the long name).