Moon phase lookup
What did the moon look like on your birthday?
The moon on the night you were born was a particular moon: a thin crescent, half lit, or full. Pick the date and see it, drawn the way it hung in the sky.
Working out the moon…
Look it up
Pick the date
A birthday, the night you met, the day they were born. The moon turns to the phase it showed that night, with every crater along the shadow’s edge.
Seen at 9 p.m. from Vancouver. You can set the exact place and time in the builder.
Make this moon a printWhy the moon changes shape
The moon is always half lit by the sun. What changes over the month is how much of that lit half faces us. At new moon it sits between us and the sun and we see its dark side; two weeks later it is on the far side of us and we see the lit face whole. The cycle from one new moon to the next takes about 29.5 days, so the same date a year later almost never has the same moon.
Reading the phase on your date
- Waxing means the lit part is growing. A waxing moon is up in the evening, so a waxing crescent on your birthday was the thin moon seen in the west after sunset.
- Waning means it is shrinking. A waning moon rises late and is still up in the morning.
- Gibbous is more than half lit but not full; crescent is less than half.
- The percentage is how much of the face was lit. A full moon is about 100%, a first or last quarter about 50%.
How we draw it
We work out the moon’s phase for your date, time and place, and the way it tilted from where you stood, then draw it from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter maps of the lunar surface. The shadow’s edge falls where it really fell, so the craters and seas along it are the ones you would have seen through binoculars that night. More on how the sky is calculated.
The moon pairs well with a star map of the same night: one shows the whole sky, the other the moon up close. A second design in the same order is 25% off.
Keep the moon from that night
Set the date, time and place, add your words, and see the finished print before you pay.
Design your moon printFree to design. You only pay when you’re happy with it.