Wasted (Cloudy) Days and Wasted Nights

Welcome to another post about our moon.

I had hoped to be able to take some photos of the new moon but the past five evenings have had clouds obscuring the moon even as it grew from the first sliver to almost the first quarter, so herewith another post without photos to break up the verbiage.

 As I've waited for the moon to show her face to past few evenings I thought it might be worth discussing the apparent magic that moves the waning crescent from where it appears just before sunrise in the eastern sky to the first of the waxing crescent which appears just after sunset in the western sky.

Of course it's not magic at all but just the slow orbit of the moon around the earth and the light of the sun that produce the various phases of the moon and where we observe that phase in our sky each night, or day.

As mentioned in the last post, the new moon is not visible to us here on earth because the moon is between us and the sun. As the waning moon becomes smaller it is moving closer and closer to the sun's position so that on the last morning just before sunrise we (if we are lucky) can see the last sliver of the sun's light reflected off our moon.

The next morning the moon rises at about the same time as the sun so we can't see it since the sun is shining on what we consider the back side of the moon and the side facing us is dark. The moon marches with the sun across the daytime sky and disappears, still unseen, below the western horizon.

The next morning the moon rises a little after the sun but we can't see it because of the strong sunlight that covers the much weaker light from the first sliver of the waxing crescent. It is only that evening when the sun moves below the horizon and the sky turns darker that we have a chance of seeing the moon.

Each day the moon's orbit carries it further away from the sun until we sometimes can see the moon in the afternoon sky as it reaches the waxing gibbous stage of growth.

Finally the moon is almost directly opposite the sun in relation to the earth and we are treated to a full moon. From that point we see the waning moon later and later in the evening and early morning. Again we can see the waning gibbous moon in the morning sky under the right conditions but as it moves closer to the sun we don't see the moon during the day but can only see it between the time it rises and when the sun comes up with its much stronger light and covers the weaker moonlight.

Let's hope the Seattle sky is clear a week from tomorrow (10/27) so we'll be able to observe the total lunar eclipse. Of course, it will happen whether or not we can see it. We just need those pesky clouds to move on to other places where they need rain and cool weather.