Lunar Phases

Although we know that the Sun moves 1/12 of its path around the sky each month, for purposes of explaining the phases, we can assume that the Sun’s light comes from roughly the same direction during the course of a four-week lunar cycle. The Moon, on the other hand, moves completely around Earth in that time. As we watch the Moon from our vantage point on Earth, how much of its face we see illuminated by sunlight depends on the angle the Sun makes with the Moon.

Here is a simple experiment to show you what we mean: stand about 6 feet in front of a bright electric light in a completely dark room (or outdoors at night) and hold in your hand a small round object such as a tennis ball or an orange. Your head can then represent Earth, the light represents the Sun, and the ball the Moon. Move the ball around your head (making sure you don’t cause an eclipse by blocking the light with your head). You will see phases just like those of the Moon on the ball. (Another good way to get acquainted with the phases and motions of the Moon is to follow our satellite in the sky for a month or two, recording its shape, its direction from the Sun, and when it rises and sets.)

Let’s examine the Moon’s cycle of phases using Figure 1, which depicts the Moon’s behavior for the entire month. The trick to this figure is that you must imagine yourself standing on Earth, facing the Moon in each of its phases. So, for the position labeled “New,” you are on the right side of Earth and it’s the middle of the day; for the position “Full,” you are on the left side of Earth in the middle of the night. Note that in every position on Figure 1, the Moon is half illuminated and half dark (as a ball in sunlight should be). The difference at each position has to do with what part of the Moon faces Earth.

Phases of the Moon.

Figure 1. The appearance of the Moon changes over the course of a complete monthly cycle. The pictures of the Moon on the white circle show the perspective from space, with the Sun off to the right in a fixed position. The outer images show how the Moon appears to you in the sky from each point in the orbit. Imagine yourself standing on Earth, facing the Moon at each stage. In the position “New,” for example, you are facing the Moon from the right side of Earth in the middle of the day. (Note that the distance of the Moon from Earth is not to scale in this diagram: the Moon is roughly 30 Earth-diameters away from us.) (credit: modification of work by NASA)

The Moon is said to be new when it is in the same general direction in the sky as the Sun (position A). Here, its illuminated (bright) side is turned away from us and its dark side is turned toward us. You might say that the Sun is shining on the “wrong ” side of the Moon from our perspective. In this phase the Moon is invisible to us; its dark, rocky surface does not give off any light of its own. Because the new moon is in the same part of the sky as the Sun, it rises at sunrise and sets at sunset.

But the Moon does not remain in this phase long because it moves eastward each day in its monthly path around us. Since it takes about 30 days to orbit Earth and there are 360° in a circle, the Moon will move about 12° in the sky each day (or about 24 times its own diameter). A day or two after the new phase, the thin crescent first appears, as we begin to see a small part of the Moon’s illuminated hemisphere. It has moved into a position where it now reflects a little sunlight toward us along one side. The bright crescent increases in size on successive days as the Moon moves farther and farther around the sky away from the direction of the Sun (position B). Because the Moon is moving eastward away from the Sun, it rises later and later each day (like a student during summer vacation).

After about one week, the Moon is one-quarter of the way around its orbit (position C) and so we say it is at the first quarter phase. Half of the Moon’s illuminated side is visible to Earth observers. Because of its eastward motion, the Moon now lags about one-quarter of the day behind the Sun, rising around noon and setting around midnight.

During the week after the first quarter phase, we see more and more of the Moon’s illuminated hemisphere (position D), a phase that is called waxing (or growing) gibbous (from the Latin gibbus, meaning hump). Eventually, the Moon arrives at position E in our figure, where it and the Sun are opposite each other in the sky. The side of the Moon turned toward the Sun is also turned toward Earth, and we have the full phase.

When the Moon is full, it is opposite the Sun in the sky. The Moon does the opposite of what the Sun does, rising at sunset and setting at sunrise. Note what that means in practice: the completely illuminated (and thus very noticeable) Moon rises just as it gets dark, remains in the sky all night long, and sets as the Sun’s first rays are seen at dawn. Its illumination throughout the night helps lovers on a romantic stroll and students finding their way back to their dorms after a long night in the library or an off-campus party.

And when is the full moon highest in the sky and most noticeable? At midnight, a time made famous in generations of horror novels and films. (Note how the behavior of a vampire like Dracula parallels the behavior of the full Moon: Dracula rises at sunset, does his worst mischief at midnight, and must be back down in his coffin by sunrise. The old legends were a way of personifying the behavior of the Moon, which was a much more dramatic part of people’s lives in the days before electric lights and television.)

Folklore has it that more crazy behavior is seen during the time of the full moon (the Moon even gives a name to crazy behavior—“lunacy”). But, in fact, statistical tests of this “hypothesis” involving thousands of records from hospital emergency rooms and police files do not reveal any correlation of human behavior with the phases of the Moon. For example, homicides occur at the same rate during the new moon or the crescent moon as during the full moon. Most investigators believe that the real story is not that more crazy behavior happens on nights with a full moon, but rather that we are more likely to notice or remember such behavior with the aid of a bright celestial light that is up all night long.

During the two weeks following the full moon, the Moon goes through the same phases again in reverse order (points F, G, and H in Figure 1), returning to new phase after about 29.5 days. About a week after the full moon, for example, the Moon is at third quarter, meaning that it is three-quarters of the way around (not that it is three-quarters illuminated—in fact, half of the visible side of the Moon is again dark). At this phase, the Moon is now rising around midnight and setting around noon.

Note that there is one thing quite misleading about Figure 1. If you look at the Moon in position E, although it is full in theory, it appears as if its illumination would in fact be blocked by a big fat Earth, and hence we would not see anything on the Moon except Earth’s shadow. In reality, the Moon is nowhere near as close to Earth (nor is its path so identical with the Sun’s in the sky) as this diagram (and the diagrams in most textbooks) might lead you to believe.

The Moon is actually 30 Earth-diameters away from us; Science and the Universe: A Brief Tour contains a diagram that shows the two objects to scale. And, since the Moon’s orbit is tilted relative to the path of the Sun in the sky, Earth’s shadow misses the Moon most months. That’s why we regularly get treated to a full moon. The times when Earth’s shadow does fall on the Moon are called lunar eclipses and are discussed in Eclipses of the Sun and Moon.

ASTRONOMY AND THE DAYS OF THE WEEK

The week seems independent of celestial motions, although its length may have been based on the time between quarter phases of the Moon. In Western culture, the seven days of the week are named after the seven “wanderers” that the ancients saw in the sky: the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets visible to the unaided eye (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn).

In English, we can easily recognize the names Sun-day (Sunday), Moon-day (Monday), and Saturn-day (Saturday), but the other days are named after the Norse equivalents of the Roman gods that gave their names to the planets. In languages more directly related to Latin, the correspondences are clearer. Wednesday, Mercury’s day, for example, is mercoledi in Italian, mercredi in French, and miércoles in Spanish. Mars gives its name to Tuesday (martes in Spanish), Jupiter or Jove to Thursday (giovedi in Italian), and Venus to Friday (vendredi in French).

There is no reason that the week has to have seven days rather than five or eight. It is interesting to speculate that if we had lived in a planetary system where more planets were visible without a telescope, the Beatles could have been right and we might well have had “Eight Days a Week.”