All these predictions are edited transcripts of the much longer in-depth spoken forecasts that I give via our audio service. If you don't want to wait till they have been typed up, you can hear your prediction right now, without cost. The audio service now has a new name (it's called the FIVE STAR SERVICE for reasons that will soon become obvious) but the free trial remains on offer.

Lunar standstills are, to the Moon, what Solstices are to the Sun. They are moments when a powerful light in the sky reaches the most extreme point in its relationship to the horizon... hovers briefly... and then begins retracing its steps.

The Sun does this twice a year. Though it always rises in the East and sets in the West, it doesn't pop up at exactly the same point each morning. It slowly creeps along the horizon, heading a tiny bit further south or north each day. At one of its solstices, it rises as far in the South-East as it can ever get... and at the other, in reaches its North-West limit. The Moon's turning point involves height rather than width or, to be more technical, latitude rather than longtitude.

Once every eighteen and a half years, it hugs the hills and then soars like a kite. In doing so, it creates a compelling optical illusion.

Objects that lie close to the horizon always appear bigger and nearer, partly because the atmosphere appears to magnify them and partly because our sense of distance is deceived. Objects that are higher look smaller and further away. So we see, over the course of a few short months, Moons that are increasingly cold and remote followed by Moons so close that it seems as if we could reach out and touch them.