Which phase can you see when the moon is waning

Waning means it is getting smaller. It is the opposite half as illuminated in the first quarter moon. The Moon displays these eight phases one after the other as it moves through its cycle each month.

It takes 27 days for the Moon to orbit Earth. That means the Moon's cycle is 27 days long. Use this tool to see the current Moon phase and to plan ahead for other Moon views. Credit: NASA. This means that the Sun, Earth, and Moon are almost in a straight line, with the Moon in between the Sun and the Earth. The Moon that we see looks very dark. First Quarter : The right half of the Moon appears lighted and the left side of the Moon appears dark.

During the time between the New Moon and the First Quarter Moon, the part of the Moon that appears lighted gets larger and larger every day, and will continue to grow until the Full Moon. Full Moon : The lighted side of the Moon faces the Earth. This means that the Earth, Sun, and Moon are nearly in a straight line, with the Earth in the middle.

We call this phase the full moon. It rises almost exactly as the Sun sets and sets just as the Sun rises the next day. The Moon has now completed one half of the lunar month. During the second half of the lunar month, the Moon grows thinner each night. We call this waning. Its shape is still gibbous at this point, but grows a little thinner each night.

As it reaches the three-quarter point in its month, the Moon once again shows us one side of its disc illuminated and the other side in darkness. However, the side that we saw dark at the first quarter phase is now the lit side. As it completes its journey and approaches new moon again, the Moon is a waning crescent. Want another description of why the Moon has phases? You can demonstrate the phases of the Moon for yourself by using a lamp and a baseball. Place the lamp with its shade removed in one end of a darkened room.

Sit in the other end of the room and hold the baseball up in front of you so that it is between your face and the lamp. Change location. The Waning Gibbous phase is when the lit-up part of the Moon shrinks from Waning means that it is shrinking and getting smaller, while gibbous refers to the oval-to-round shape. Just how much of that light we can see from Earth varies every day, and we refer to this as a Moon phase.

The Moon phases are the same all over the world, both in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.