Phases
The eight phases, and when each one is in the sky
Most explanations of the phases describe the shape and stop, which leaves you able to name a moon you cannot find. A first quarter moon is not up at midnight and a waning crescent is not up in the evening, however much anyone wants them to be — so each page here says when its phase actually rises and sets as well as what it looks like.
- New MoonRises at about sunrise and sets at about sunset · 13 facts
- Waxing CrescentRises mid-morning and sets a few hours after the Sun · 12 facts
- First QuarterRises around noon, is highest at sunset, and sets around midnight. The best-placed phase for anybody who wants to look at the Moon in the early evening without staying up. · 12 facts
- Waxing GibbousRises in the afternoon and sets in the small hours, so it is the phase most likely to be up when you happen to look. It also does the single most common thing anybody notices about the Moon: it is visible in broad daylight. · 11 facts
- Full MoonRises at about sunset, is highest around midnight, sets at about sunrise. Up for the whole night and only for the night · 22 facts
- Waning GibbousRises in the mid-evening and is still up after sunrise, so it is the phase people see on the way to work and assume they have caught something unusual. · 9 facts
- Last QuarterRises around midnight, is highest at sunrise, and sets around noon. This is the quarter almost nobody sees, for scheduling reasons rather than astronomical ones. · 13 facts
- Waning CrescentRises in the small hours and hangs low in the east before dawn. There are about three mornings of it before the Moon is lost in the Sun's glare entirely. · 9 facts
Rise and set drift about fifty minutes later each day, so these are good to an hour or so anywhere that is not the Arctic — and they hold in both hemispheres, because which half is lit changes with where you stand but when it is above the horizon does not. The calendar computes the exact times for your own location.