Selûne (moon)

Selûne was the name of Toril and Abeir's moon.

Description
Selûne was about 2,000 miles (3,200 km) across and was located some 20,000 miles (32,000 km) away from Toril. To an observer, it appeared about the size of a human fist held at arm's length. It was quite bright on a clear night, able to cast pale shadows.

Selûne was followed in the sky by the Tears of Selûne, a constellation of very small celestial bodies (often identified as nine stars, but in reality hundreds of asteroids).

Powers
By the hand of Selûne, goddess of the moon and its namesake, the moon could be a conduit of her powers. In 1357 DR, her avatar Luna used a bright beam of moonlight to transport Conner and the kittenlord to her inn, Selûne's Smile, and later to crack open the roof of a cavern and blind ogres holding the paladin Priam Agrivar.

Significance
In Kara-Tur, it was believed that the Moon Women of the Celestial Bureaucracy were responsible for steering the motion of the Moon along its course.

Eclipses
Due to the size and relative rotation of Selûne and Toril, eclipses were quite frequent and commonplace.

Lunar phases
Selûne was full at midnight on Hammer 1, 1372 DR, and subsequently every 30 days, 10 hours, and 30 minutes. Selûne was also full at midnight on the first day of every leap year. Selûne made exactly 48 synodic revolutions every four years, so the phase of Selûne was the same at the same time on the same date every four years. Selûne was generally full around the first day of each month, give or take a day; festival days served to keep the moon's phases consistent across calendar months and years.

For those who practiced lunar magic, the phase of the moon affected the potency of their spells, peaking in the full moon and dipping at the new moon.