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Lunar phase. A full moon sets behind San Gorgonio Mountain in California on a midsummer's morning. A lunar phase or Moon phase is the apparent shape of the Moon 's directly sunlit portion as viewed from the Earth (because the Moon is tidally locked with the Earth, the same hemisphere is always facing the Earth).
The lunar distance is on average approximately 385,000 km (239,000 mi), or 1.28 light-seconds; this is roughly 30 times Earth's diameter or 9.5 times Earth's circumference. Around 389 lunar distances make up an AU astronomical unit (roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun). Lunar distance is commonly used to express the distance to near ...
Moonrise and moonset. A full moon sinking behind San Gorgonio Mountain, California, on a mid summer morning. Moonrise and moonset are times when the upper limb of the Moon appears above the horizon and disappears below it, respectively. The exact times depend on the lunar phase and declination, as well as the observer's location.
At that time the Moon orbited the Earth at half its current distance, making it appear 2.8 times larger than it does today. [61] The newly formed Moon settled into a much closer Earth orbit than it has today. Each body therefore appeared much larger in the sky of the other, eclipses were more frequent, and tidal effects were stronger. [61]
The moon, Venus and Jupiter aligned in the evening sky. The crescent moon appeared below Venus and Jupiter on Tuesday, Feb. 21. A similar alignment will be visible on Thursday, Feb. 23 ...
The Earth phase, Terra phase, terrestrial phase, or phase of Earth, is the shape of the directly sunlit portion of Earth as viewed from the Moon (or elsewhere extraterrestrially ). From the Moon, the Earth phases gradually and cyclically change over the period of a synodic month (about 29.53 days), as the orbital positions of the Moon around ...
A lunar calendar is a calendar based on the monthly cycles of the Moon 's phases ( synodic months, lunations ), in contrast to solar calendars, whose annual cycles are based on the solar year. The most widely observed purely lunar calendar is the Islamic calendar. [ a] A purely lunar calendar is distinguished from a lunisolar calendar, whose ...
Lunar eclipse. A lunar eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when the Moon moves into the Earth's shadow, causing the Moon to be darkened. [ 1] Such an alignment occurs during an eclipse season, approximately every six months, during the full moon phase, when the Moon's orbital plane is closest to the plane of the Earth's orbit .