Some of y'all will laugh at me for posting something that you find to be SO obvious. But no matter how well I learned the material in school, this didn't sink in. I read an astronomy article in our county weekly after a few years of living out here in the boonies. Then I watched the sky for what I'd read about, and it began to make sense.
The full moon is up for the full length of the night. It rises in the evening and sets in the morning. The half moon is up half the night. It rises around midnight and sets around noon (or vice versa). A skinny little sliver of the moon is up for only a sliver of the night.
Sometimes I think this is goofy for me to be so tickled to have figured this out. But apparently not everybody has it figured out. It's not uncommon to see children's picture books with an illustration of a full moon low in the sky at 2 a.m., or a story that tells about people finding their way through the forest at midnight by the tiny bit of light that came from a sliver of moon overhead.
Tonight, one of the boys noticed the big, pretty evening star. So I showed them Sky at a Glance, my favorite astronomy website, and its weekly planet round-up. Venus is looking very bright in the western sky in the evenings right now.
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I have been watching Venus and the moon the last 2 nights, too! Showed them to Dad. Neat! Thank you for the info on full, half, etc. I have tried to keep track of the moon many times, but never figured out the part of night visibe was even IN the equation.
ReplyDeleteBut, Mom, you guys can see so little of the sky, it would be really hard to figure out those things simply by observation.
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