The phases of the Moon are something you've noticed from time to time in the night sky, but perhaps never really thought about. What causes the phases of the Moon is really nothing more than the Moon's orbit around Earth, Earth's orbit around the Sun, and how this all appears from o...
The Moon phases visualization shows the positions of the Moon and Earth in real time. Distances are not to scale. The Sun is not shown, however, the Earth's illumination indicates its position to the left. Because of the Earth's axial tilt, the Sun's assumed location shifts up and down...
Refer to the corresponding numbered phases in the diagram above in this article to follow along. New Moon. When we are in the “New” Moon phase, the Moon is not visible from our perspective because it is positioned between the Sun and Earth. The portion of the Moon that is actually ...
Earth from the Sun, and thus the side of the Moon that isilluminatedfaces Earth. First and last quarter, in which half the Moon appears illuminated, occur when the Moon is at a right angle with respect to the Sun when viewed from Earth. The waxing and waning crescent phases occur when ...
Moon phases describe how much of the moon's disk is illuminated from our perspective. New moon: The moon is between Earth and the sun, and the side of the moon facing toward us receives no direct sunlight; it is lit only by dim sunlight reflected from Earth. Waxing crescent: As the ...
Our Moon orbits around our planet, and this Earth-Moon system orbits around the Sun. Even though we only see light on part of the Moon, from the perspective of the Sun, half of it is always illuminated. Stuck here on Earth, we see the Moon in various phases of illumination as it com...
The Moon has phases because it orbits Earth, which causes the portion we see illuminated to change. The Moon takes 27.3 days to orbit Earth, but the lunar phase cycle (from new Moon to new Moon) is 29.5 days. The Moon spends the extra 2.2 days “catching up” because Earth travels abo...
The temporal interplay of exogenic and endogenic processes in altering the Moon indicates that the evolution history of the Moon can be divided into three dynamic evolutionary phases. From a geochronologic perspective, the three phases are designated as three Eon/Eonothem-level units, which are Eo...
Learn about the lunar cycle, as well as the origins of the many names given to each month's full moon.
This shows the new moon phase of the lunar cycle as seen from Earth. Though the phases of the moon are not caused by Earth casting a shadow on the moon, the Earth and the moon do occasionally cast shadows on each other. When this happens, it is called an eclipse. There are two type...