Tag: Crescent

Where are you? The Moon can tell you!

ryan9 Comments
I was out on a sunny day a few weeks ago waiting for a bus, and as per usual I have my head up in space (I would say up in the clouds but that is too low for me).  I noticed the Moon up in the sky, just past first quarter, and I was thinking about the angle of the illuminated side and how it related to some of the positions of the Earth and Sun in space.  I wondered what information we could gather from the way it looked.  It led me to this ‘illuminating’ post. I realized...

The New Moon and a Sinking Mars

ryan2 Comments
Every 29.5 days we see a new Moon, or rather we don’t see it, since it’s lost in the glare of the Sun.  But a few days after the new moon, we can see it slowly move away from the Sun and become visible after sunset, with the thinnest crescent growing a bit larger each night.  You may have heard that Mars and Venus also live in the Western sky after sunset, with Venus moving higher and Mars appearing to double back toward the Sun, soon to be lost in the glare of our home star.  Last night I was...