THE MOON TONIGHT
Some classrooms have a window everyone watches. The Celestial Tower has the Moon. This page keeps the Tower's moon dial: it reads the sky for the day you visit and shows the Moon exactly as it stands, its phase, how much of it is lit, and how old the cycle is. No two visits in a month show quite the same face.
The Moon Tonight
Reading the Moon
The Moon does not change shape. What changes is how much of its sunlit half we can see from Earth, and it changes on a steady cycle of about 29 and a half days, from New Moon through the growing (waxing) phases to Full Moon, then shrinking (waning) back to New. The eight phases, in order: New Moon, Waxing Crescent, First Quarter, Waxing Gibbous, Full Moon, Waning Gibbous, Last Quarter, Waning Crescent.
Cultures named the full moons of the year for what the season was doing: the harvest, the hunt, the first frost. Those names, and the astronomy underneath them, are Unit II of Celestial Studies, five lessons on the Moon alone.
Try it tonight. Step outside and find the Moon. Does the dial above match the sky? Sketch what you see in your Sky Log: the shape, where it hung, and when. That small habit, repeated across a month, is the whole beginning of astronomy.
Field scholars: the Moon Journal field trip on the Field Trip blog turns a month of these sketches into a trip.
The dial above shows you her face for tonight. The Wheel, in my Tower, shows you everything around the face — where she rises and when she sets, the sign she travels and the stars actually behind her, and the whole turning sky she crosses to get there. When the face is not enough, come up to the Wheel.
Open the WheelPROFESSOR VESPER GLIMMERWICK · CELESTIAL TOWER