The Waning Gibbous

Past full and shrinking, with the shadow now eating the opposite edge from the one it left.

Where to look: Rises 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.

Astronomically it is the mirror of the waxing gibbous and practically it is nothing like it, because the hours have moved: the same shape now belongs to the second half of the night. Historically this is the phase for anything that needed light after midnight, which is why it turns up in so many accounts of night marches and midnight rides.

Commonly muddled: It looks like the waxing gibbous reflected. If you cannot tell which one you are looking at, the time of night is the giveaway, not the shape.