CS: Time between Passovers

[Joz]

Just a bit of idle wondering: Is it ever stated in the Crystal Singer books how long it is between Passovers? Are they once a year? Once every 18 months? Or more irregular intervals?

Because crystal singers loose their sense of time I suppose it didn't seem that important to state a figure like this, but I wouldn't mind finding out.

[P'ter]

I seem to remember that it's to do with coinciding conjuctions of Ballybran's moons so I suspect that it's irregular in terms of solar years.

Not sure of frequency; I'd have to re-read with that in mind.

[Joz]

I have some idea that the intervals between aren't the same each time, but there should be some pattern to them, much like we have a pattern for eclipses here on earth. But we only have three bodies to deal with and the Ballybran system would have five!

I suppose I'll have to use my knowledge of earth-moon eclipses to reconstruct the Ballybran system then?

[Greenrider Tresa]

I used to have a link to a site that let me create a calendar with any number of moons and their phases. But I lost it, and I don't know if I can find it again now that the Irony Games site is gone.

[calenlily]

Huh, for some reason I'd always thought it was once a year. Silly unobservant me...

[Brenda]

Because Passover here on Earth is once a year, perhaps?

[calenlily]

Quite likely. And possibly because it's treated as kind of a seasonal thing. My mind seems to have jumped directly from "regular periodic event" to "must be a year"

[Pam]

I'm pretty sure it never mentions a set time. But, it's possible there is a set time and crystal singers just never notice because they don't pay attention to the passage of time.

[kevia]

I don't think it does give a stated time, but it does state "the passover storms of" a given year, so it doesn't seem like they could be more often than once a year. If it were more often than that, they would have had to say "the passover storms of early" whatever year. Could be less often than a year, though.

[granath]

Indeed. However, I think that because they mention years, it's not surprising if people take for granted that they occur each and every year, even though that's probably not the case.

[P'ter]

Considering the number of astronomical bodies involved in the alignments I would expect a 'passover' periood to be in excess of a 'year'; and even then there would be major and minor passovers according to whether ALL the bodies were lined up, or only nearly all of them. The amplitude of the storms would then be affected by which of the bodies was out of line.

[Cheryl]

As long as they're not more frequent than once a year, the referring to them by year makes sense. We do that to refer to big storms/weather-related events: the blizzard of '93, the flood of '05, etc.

It's only when they're more frequent than once a year that we come up with proper names to distinguish different ones (eg hurricane names).

[Brenda]

It's the only thing that forces a break in the Singers' routine, so it's how they mark time.