Phase notes

Waning Gibbous

Past full and shrinking. The same humped shape as the waxing gibbous, but lit from the other side, and it arrives later each night.

What you see

A bright, slightly flattened moon that comes up after dark and is still there at breakfast.

Next two years

The dates when the moon sits closest to the middle of this band.

The eight phases

Where the name comes from

A phase is only the angle between the sun and the moon as we see it. This one sits at 225 degrees of that angle, five eighths of the way through a cycle that runs 29.53 days.

Crescent means less than half the disc is lit, gibbous means more than half, and the quarters are the two moments in between. The quarter names count orbit, not brightness - a first quarter moon looks like a half.

Every date of the year

Three hundred and sixty-six pages, one for each date, each with the phase for that day printed year by year.