Moon mode
The Moon, the night they were born.
This is tonight's Moon, lit as it is right now. Give a date and it runs back through the months to the one that hung over their first night.
- When
- Tonight, over India
- Phase
- —
- Lit
- —
Pl. I
Twenty-nine and a half days, one Moon.
The eight phases
- 00
New Moon. Between us and the Sun, its lit side turned away. Only earthshine, sunlight bounced off the Earth, shows the disc.
- 01
A sliver in the west after sunset, lit on its right, the dark part still faintly grey.
- 02
Half lit, a week in. Along the line between day and night the craters throw their longest shadows.
- 03
More than half, still growing. Rising in the afternoon, up for most of the evening.
- 04
Opposite the Sun, lit straight on. Rising at sunset, setting at dawn: the brightest night of the month.
- 05
Shrinking now, lit from the left. Rising later each night, still up at breakfast.
- 06
Half again, the other half. A Moon of the small hours and the morning.
- 07
A thin curve before sunrise, then lost in the Sun's glare, and the month begins again.
Pl. II
One Moon, four ways to keep it.
Every poster shows the same Moon for the same night: its real phase, lit from NASA's photographs. What changes is what is set around it.
Showing your night on every design
Pl. III
Lit, not drawn.
Nothing on the Moon is painted. Every crater is in NASA's photograph, and the light falls on it the way that night's sunlight did.
Give us a date and a time and we work out the Moon the way an almanac would: where it stood against the Sun, how much of it was lit, whether it was growing or shrinking, how far away it was.
Then we light the real Moon to match. Its dusty ground reflects sunlight by its own rule (the Lommel–Seeliger law, which is why a full Moon looks flat and bright right to its edge) and the craters along the line between day and night throw their shadows the right way.
The same code draws your preview and the print file.
- From NASA's photographs
- LRO
- The Moon on every poster is the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's mosaic of the near side, relit for the night it shows.
- Days, new Moon to new Moon
- 29.53
- The phase is worked out for the minute of birth, not looked up by the day.
- Of the Moon ever seen from Earth
- 59%
- It always turns the same face to us, nodding just enough to show a little more over a month.
- Seen from
- India
- Shown as from the northern hemisphere: a waxing Moon is lit on its right, a waning one on its left.
The Moon, night by night
This month
Enter a date at the top of the page and this becomes that month, with their night marked.
Every Moon poster starts the same way