Eli5 Moon looks different in each hemisphere?

Question

I live in Australia and when the moon isn’t full it always appears to fill up from the bottom up. So a new moon looks like a croissant with the curved side facing down. But on northern hemisphere flags like Turkey for example it appears as a croissant standing up with the curve facing left. Does the moon appear to wax and wane from top to bottom or left to right in different parts of the world?

In: 2168

Answer 1

The smile appearance is to do with latitude on the earth. The earth is tilted in its orbit but the moon orbits the earth in the plane that the earth moves (it does not orbit the equator, it orbits the earth in the plane the earth moves around the sun).

When the moon travels more directly over head, as it hits the horizon it looks more like a smile than a side on crescent. When the moon is further south of you (or north if you’re in the southern hemisphere) then it has a side on appearance.

The nearer the equator and the tropics you are the more often the moon appears to move over head. The further north or south you are from the equator the less frequently you will see this and it’ll appear more side on. The angle of the moon changes the further away from the equator you get – from 6 o’clock (bottom smile) to 3 oclock perfect side on nearer the poles

Australia is a big continent but generally the continent is closer to the equator than Europe and the US and particularly the further north you go in Australia including into the tropics proper on the north coast

So the closer to the tropics and equator you are the more the moon will seem to move overhead and the more you will see that phenomenon (especially when it’s near the horizon). The further away you are the less you will see that.

Edit: also remember in the English speaking world we generally will have a bias in what we see in terms of TV, movies and games. They’re largely produced in places where it’s normal to see the moon side on, and thats the normal viewpoint of the moon from Europe and USA. Its become “normal” to us. But people living in the tropics will not find it so unusual. Even in Aus most people live in the south where this difference is less obvious.

Edit 2: just to be clear I’m answering the question in the text of the post about the smile appearance. The title is a different question which others have answered about the direction the moon seems to fill (left/right)