The sun's light is now shining on the other half of the visible face of the moon.
This is the waning gibbous phase.ĭays later, the moon has moved another quarter of the way around Earth, to the third quarter position. Next, the moon moves until more than half of its face appears to be getting sunlight, but the amount is decreasing. The moon’s disk is as close as it can be to being fully illuminated by the sun, so this is called full moon. When the moon has moved 180 degrees from its new moon position, the sun, Earth and the moon form a line. This phase is called a waxing gibbous moon.
More than half of the moon's face appears to be getting sunlight. This thin sliver is called the waxing crescent.Ī week after new moon, the moon is 90 degrees away from the sun in the sky and is half-illuminated from our point of view, what we call first quarterbecause it is about a quarter of the way around Earth.Ī few days later, the area of illumination continues to increase. On average, the moon rises about 50 minutes later each day, which means sometimes it rises during daylight and other times during nighttime hours.Īt new moon, the moon is between Earth and the sun, so that the side of the moon facing toward us receives no direct sunlight, and is lit only by dim sunlight reflected from Earth.Ī few days later, as the moon moves around Earth, the side we can see gradually becomes more illuminated by direct sunlight. As the moon revolves around Earth, it is illuminated from varying angles by the sun - what we see when we look at the moon is reflected sunlight. So, the moon always shows us the same face there is no single "dark side" of the moon. It also takes about 27 days for the moon to rotate on its axis.
The moon is a sphere that travels once around Earth every 27.3 days. This is when full moons will occur in 2018, according to NASA:
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