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
Depends on what direction you’re facing to look at it.
Southish in the north hemisphere, northish in the south hemisphere, and east/overhead/west at low latitudes.
The southern hemisphere is “upside down” with respect to the northern hemisphere. Imagine a person walking across a room, left to right. Then imagine yourself upside down and them walking the same path. They will be moving right to left from your point of view.
OH MY GOD I noticed the moon looked different when I was living south of the equator a few years ago. I tried to ask WTF on Reddit at the time and folks were like “that’s not a thing, you’re imagining it”.
In Australia we actually get a face . 2 eyes up the top and a big smile. The true man in the moon
– Look at a crescent moon illustration
– You are at the equator
– tilt your head to the left — this is you traversing to the northern latitudes (same longitude)
– tilt your head to the right. This is moving south.
– note how the crescent moves differently
I emigrated to Aus from UK. I saw a lunar eclipse. I saw with my own eyes the shadow of the Earth move from bottom-left to top-right; neat! When I saw all the lunar eclipse stuff from the Northern hemisphere friends, they all showed it moving from top-right to bottom-left! They were taking photographs standing upside-down!! 😆
wait i didn’t know this and now i’m fascinated. yall see it differently?!?!
😭😭😭😭 I read that as ‘Elon Musk looks different in each hemisphere’ and I was so confused. I eagerly opened this to see if someone actually could explain why.
The flags aren’t realistic — in particular, the Turkish flag shows a star within the arms of the crescent which is obviously impossible .
Most of the top answers on this thread are complete nonsense too. The moon is far away from earth (about 100x it’s diameter), parallax effects are negligible and the analogies with a soccer ball don’t work if you actually do them to scale.
So, what’s happening? Well, the moon is lit by the sun. The closed side of the crescent ALWAYS points at the sun because you are seeing the part of the moon with sunlight shining on it .
If the sun is just below the horizon (be it sunrise or sunset, the closed side of the crescent points down and also a bit to the left or right
What varies based on latitude — AND season — is whether it’s a bit to the left or a bit to the right .
The sun always sets in a westerly direction, but in the southern hemisphere it goes E -N – W while the north goes E – S – W.
So if you look at a sunset in the southern hemisphere, the moon will be up and to the right of the sun , so the crescent points up and right; whereas in the northern hemisphere it will point up and left since the sun came from the left (south).
To put it another way, everyone’s looking at the same picture but the angle of horizon slopes the opposite way for each hemisphere . In your eye view you think of the horizon as constant and the bodies moving, but try thinking of the sky as constant and the horizon angle changing.
As mentioned earlier there is seasonal variation too — take a photo of every sunset over the course of a year and you will see the angle changing .
Yes. In the UK it’s more or less C shaped, but when I went to the Philippines it was more U shaped. It was very weird.
Latest Answers