The moon is a huge rock. The moon has craters. The moon is huge. When the moon is in front of the sun, this is called an eclipse.
The moon looks like it changes but it really doesn't! It just looks like that because of the sun reflecting. This is called phases of the moon. The phases are named after how much we can see. Why do the phases happen? The moon orbits Earth and sometimes it blocks the light from the sun. It takes 28 days for the moon to orbit Earth. In this time, it goes through 8 phases. The moon looks different in each phase. The first phase is the new moon In this phase, the moon is dark! You can’t see it! The second phase is the first quarter (though it’s not the first phase). The third phase is the is the waxing gibbous. Waxing means that the moon appears bigger each night. When the moon is waxing, we can see more than half of the moon, but not yet a full moon. The next phase is the full moon. The full moon appears as an entire circle.
Full Moon
Once a month the Earth is completely between the moon and sun. When this happens, we see the entire moon. It is fully illuminated or lit up. This is the full moon.
New Moon
During the new moon phase, the moon is in between Earth and the sun. We see the part of the moon that has no light. It looks like there is no moon in the sky! It is really dark!
Waxing Crescent
The moon moves away from the sun and we see a small piece of it!
a waxing crescent
Waxing Gibbous
As the moon moves away from the sun, we see more of the moon. When we start to see more light, this is called waxing. Waxing means that the moon is getting bigger. It starts to make a shape called a gibbous. We can see it around sunset each night. During this phase, more than half to almost all of the moon is visible from Earth.
A waxing gibbous moon
First Quarter
This phase is also called the half moon because we can see exactly half of the moon! Isn't that cool? 50% of the moon is lit up! In this phase, the moon appears during the middle of the day and is visible until late at night!
Waning Gibbous
This phase comes directly after the full moon. In this phase, the moon appears to get smaller. We can see either half of the moon or up to 1% of the moon in this phase.
This picture shows the moon going around Earth and what the moon looks like in each phase as it orbits Earth
Interesting Facts about the Phases of the Moon!
Did you know that the moon has the same phases all over the world? No matter where you go in the world, you will experience all eight phases. However. the part you see depends on where you are in the world at a certain time! When the northern hemisphere (like us!) can see the right half of the moon, the southern hemisphere sees the left half of the moon!