Lupin's transformation/moon timing

[Brooks R]

No: HPFGUIDX 2894

Just to throw a further monkey wrench into this topic - 

Based on NHN's DeathDay of 1492 and 500th anniversary party in CoS 
(ignoring the contradiction of how long it's been since he's eaten,
in Book I) the CoS takes place in the '92-'93 school year.

Therefore, PoA takes place in the '93-'94 school year.

The climax of PoA is, IIRC June 6th.

Well, I ran June 6th '94 into my planetarium program, setting if for 
basically geographic center of Scotland (and set it for 1 hour fast 
summer time).  While I didn't write it down last night, and will 
doublecheck it tonight, on June 6th 1994 the moon was 27 days old -
in other words at the thinnest waning crescent before the NEW moon.  
Not full at all - just about the exact opposite, in fact.

On June 6th 93 would have been 17 days old, three days past full and 
starting to wane.

I think it is clear that JKR just wrote this whole bit for dramatic 
effect, and didn't bother to actually correlate the astronomy 
with the calendar of the year it would seemingly be set in; or she is 
not giving a 'true' timing of the years of occurence; or she looked
at the wrong calendar (I'll check '95 as well) - heck, she may have 
even used a calendar for the year she was writing the book, not the 
calendar for the year it seemingly is set in.  I can test each of 
these hypotheses with the planetarium program, and will report back
to you.  For the UK members, are my assumptions reasonable - center
of 
Scotland, on June 6th summer fast time in effect?  If so I can
provide the exact times of the sunsets/moonrises as well - I could 
also give you the (probably negligible) time differences between the 
center of Scotland and Edinborough....  of course if someone else 
wants to haul out an ephemeris or an equivalent program and post it 
before I get around to it, feel free!


-Brooks