New Moon
Waxing Crescent
First Quarter or Half Moon
Waxing Gibbous
Full Moon
Waning Gibbous
Last Quarter or Half Moon
Waning Crescent
The moon is not visible from Earth. The moon is between the Sun and the Earth.
The dark side is facing us.
This phase lasts one night.
Waxing means that the bright side is increasing. The right side is the bright side.
Less than one half of the moon is illuminated.
This phase includes any visible moon from a small sliver to almost half.
The entire right side of the moon is illuminated.
The moon looks like a half circle.
The illuminated side is increasing.
This phase only lasts one night
Gibbous means that more than one half is visible, but it is not quite full.
This phase includes the night after the first quarter to the night before the full moon.
Full Moon
The moon is full and bright. It looks like a large circle.
The illuminated side is facing us.
Only happens one night per lunation.
The moon appears more than half but not quite full.
Waning means that the illuminated side is decreasing.
The left side is the bright side.
Left Half of the moon is illuminated.
The illuminated side is decreasing.
This phase also only lasts for one night.
Less than one half of the moon is illuminated.
The moon will continue to become smaller and smaller.
Why is only one side of the moon visible from the earth?
We always see the same side of the moon. The Moon always keeps the same side pointing towards us so we can never see the 'back' of the Moon from the Earth.
The moon revolves or orbits the Earth once every 29 days.
We all ways see the same side of the moon because the moon rotates and revolves at about the same speed.
The opposite side of the moon is hidden from our view.
The Moon is not a light source, it does not make its own light. The moon reflects light from the sun. We can see the Moon because light from the Sun bounces off it back to the Earth. If the Sun wasn't there, we wouldn't be able to see it.
The Sun always lights up (illuminates) half of the Moon at one time.
The Moon appears to change shape but what we are actually seeing is the Moon lit up by the light from the Sun in different ways on different days.
Why does the moon have phases?
The revolution of the Moon around the Earth causes the Moon to appear to have phases.
Few questions for you to revise:
ECLIPSE QUOTES
"Here lie the bodies of Ho and Hi,Whose fate, though sad, is risible;Being slain because they could not spyTh' eclipse which was invisible."
Author unknown: Said to refer to the Chinese
eclipse of 2136 BC or 2159 BC.
"If the Sun at its rising is like a crescent and wears a crown like the Moon: the king wll capture his enemy's land; evil will leave the land, and (the land) will experience good . . . "
Refers to a solar eclipse of 27 May 669 BC.Rasil the older, Babylonian scribe to the king.Quoted in Historical Eclipses and Earth's Rotation, by F Richard Stephenson, Cambridge University Press, 1997, page 125.
"Nothing can be surprising any more or impossible or miraculous, now that Zeus, father of the Olympians has made night out of noonday, hiding the bright sunlight, and . . . fear has come upon mankind. After this, men can believe anything, expect anything. Don't any of you be surprised in future if land beasts change places with dolphins and go to live in their salty pastures, and get to like the sounding waves of the sea more than the land, while the dolphins prefer the mountains."
May refer to a total solar eclipse of 6 April 648 BC. Archilochus, Greek poet (c680-640 BC) Quoted in Historical Eclipses and Earth's Rotation, by F Richard Stephenson, Cambridge University Press, 1997, page 338. Partly quoted in Encyclopaedia Britannica CD 98.
"On the day of the new moon, in the month of Hiyar, the Sun was put to shame, and went down in the daytime, with Mars in attendance."
One of the earliest written records of an eclipse of the Sun, on 3 May 1375 BC, found in the city of Ugarit in Mesopotamia.(Reprinted, from Chasing the Shadow, copyright 1994 by Joel K Harris and Richard L Talcott, by permission of Kalmbach Publishing Co.
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