The moon sometimes looks like a silver banana in the night, and it sometimes looks like a big round ball. That’s because the moon has phases. So... What is the phase of a moon? It is any of the varying appearances of the moon as seen from earth as different amounts of the lunar disk are illuminated by the sun. Everyday the moon slowly changes its appearance at night. What shape depends on which part of the earth the moon is. The moon orbits the earth and the earth orbits the sun. So, it most likely changes its shape.
The moon has different appearances because of the sun. Why does the moon have different appearances??? The moon does not actually change size itself. Sometimes the earth would be covering the moon from the sun, sometimes the moon would be in front of the earth facing the sun directly. So, it appears to change size because different parts of it are in the shadow. As the moon orbits the earth, the portion of illuminated moon that we see changes giving rise to the phases of the moon.
The moon has eight phases. These eight phases are, in order, new moon (No moon yet), waxing crescent (a tiny little curve), First quarter (A silver banana), Waxing gibbous (not quite full moon yet), Full moon (big round ball), Waning gibbous (full moon begins to fall into the shadows), last quarter (flipped banana), waning crescent (almost turning into new moon to start the cycle again) The cycle repeats and begins again once a month (which is every 29.5 days).
My favorite phase of the moon is the full moon. Where all of the side of the moon that is facing earth is lit by the sun. That is because on my birthday, the blood moon appeared. And I LOVE creepy stuff. A legend says that when the blood moon rises, the dead bodies and creatures come to live and kill people. It is scary for others, but very interesting and spooky for me. The blood moon could be considered a full moon but painted with a flash of red. The blood moon happens four or seven times a year.
Did you know how the moon was formed? Some scientist believed that the moon was formed by an asteroid or comet the size of mars crashing on to earth. It spread a massive amount of hot liquid and the liquid combined together to form a round 3D silver ball. Which is not really far from earth. Since it is round. The sun’s light would make the moon seem to change shape. People start noticing the moon thousands of years ago. That is how the moon was formed.
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