First Quarter Moon

Over the past three entries I have made my way through some of the phases of the moon. According to the figure above I should observe the first quarter moon tonight. Last week I observed the new moon and as mentioned before the moon goes through close to 2 phases a week. This means I should see the first quarter moon. This phase of the moon rises at noon and will be highest in the sky at 6 pm and will set at midnight. I chose to view the moon at around 8pm on Sunday night. When I observed the moon it was not yet a full half illuminated it was closer to the first quarter moon phase as opposed to the waxing crescent phase. 

This Figure was obtained by Stellarium

           This figure above is close to what I observed when looking at the moon on Sunday night. As you can see the full quarter of the moon is not illuminated and thus it is not quite in the first quarter phase. I compared my observation to Stellarium which agreed. I then fast forward to the next day on Stellarium and recorded the phase of the sun. For the figure below one can see that a quarter of the moon is illuminated. This means that the moon on Sunday was closer to the first quarter phase. 

This Figure was obtained by Stellarium

         This will be my last blog on the phases of the moon. Next week the moon will be back to the same phase that it was when I started my blog. I am going to now concentrate on certain constellations that are in our sky every weekend. Hope you enjoyed the phases of the moon.