Happy Wednesday dear ones! In this week’s letter, you’ll learn about…
✍️ Learning about the actual phases globally and thus shapes of the moon when looking at the night sky.
💫 Moon planning structure: a new moon cycle and its phases in calendar planning
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📖 The Illusion of the Moon
Unlike the Seasons, the moon phases are the same everywhere on Earth. However, depending on your location - Northern Hemisphere vs Southern Hemisphere and whether you are close or far away from the Equator, the moon phases change even though their energy remains the same. In this post, I’ll explain more about this.
It’s all about the angles baby!
The reason I’m writing about this is because most information out there is based on the Northern Hemisphere. As a Southern Hemisphere baby, I feel it’s important to understand the difference especially if you are a moon lover, someone who wants to start living with the cycles of nature, and/or if you travel a lot to other parts of the world or moving to the other hemisphere. And not to forget if this new location is very close or far away from the Equator.
The Equator is an imaginary line - meaning it’s not physical - that divides the Northern and Southern Hemisphere. This line is at 0° latitude from the North & South Pole. Read more about the Equator here.
One Moon, Three Angles
I’m not a scientist or astronomer, but I’ll explain the following from my personal experiences.
No matter where you are at night and you look at the moon, if visible, the phase and cycle will be the same everywhere.
If you were to start following the moon every night, you’d see patterns during the Moon’s cycle. From an invisible, New Moon, to a small sliver line that would grow until the moon is full. Then slowly but surely the moon will start to wane until you see again a small sliver of light, but now on the opposite side from the early waxing moon days. These are the Moon Phases.
The moon’s pattern in the Northern Hemisphere
The Moon’s pattern in the Southern Hemisphere
Even though I always loved the moon, it was around 2015 that I started to pay attention to the moon's phases. My favorite phases to look at were, and still are the early nights of the Waxing Moon Phase - where you just see that tiny sliver of light - of course, the Full Moon, and then the last nights of the Waning Moon Phase.
This image shows the first half of the moon’s cycle, starting from the early waxing moon phase, all the way down to the full moon viewed from the Northern Hemisphere.
By just looking at the night sky, when the night was clear, I immediately knew which moon phase we were in.
But then something happened…
In 2018, I went to Sri Lanka on a holiday, knowing the moon was at its early stage of the Waxing Moon Phase, I looked for the moon and saw to my surprise that it was displaying something like a bull’s horn.
I took the following picture, not the best picture, but you know what I mean.
This got me thinking!
And yes, I learned that the moon’s phases are everywhere the same but look the opposite depending on where you are.
So a Northern Hemisphere early Waxing Moon Phase looks like an inverted “C”, this phase looks actually like a “C” in the Southern Hemisphere. See both patterns as displayed above. This “C” shape is what we see when the moon is waning close to the New Moon, here in the Northern Hemisphere, and is exactly the opposite for those down under.