Date: 12/03/2023 6:00:00 pm Age: Waning Gibbous (256.0 degrees) Phase: 62.1% illuminated

Upcoming Moon Phases Full: 11/27/2023 (08:55 am UT) 3rd Q: 12/05/2023 (06:04 am UT) New: 12/12/2023 (11:37 pm UT) 1st Q: 12/19/2023 (06:58 pm UT) Full: 12/27/2023 (12:16 am UT)

A full moon can seem pretty large...but it is decently far away compared to the size of the earth and moon.

The image above shows the earth-moon system to scale (1:2,160,000).

Items of Lunar Interest

			More moon images, you ask? Race through time with the moon phase movie (397 K). Still bored? Have you ever wondered what would happen if the moon blew up (460 K)? Yow!
			How about some views of the moon you can't get from the earth? Here is an amazing image (54 K) of the earth-lit new moon (that bright dot at the bottom is Venus). The Galileo probe, while on its way to Jupiter, captured this picture (57 K) of the earth-moon system.
			So where did I get the image map of the moon? Some tax money and the USGS Clementine mission was a big help! The probe mapped both the near and far sides (96 K) of the moon.
			For the current view of the earth (city lights, topological detail and all), try the Earth View Expert. Along these lines, if you're a friend of Unix and X-Windows, try the The X-Earth Home Page.
			Interested in the astronomy, the earth, or just looking at the sky? Try the NSF's Earth and Sky site.
			Everything you've ever wanted to know about the planets in the solar system (including a lot of great pictures) can be found at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Welcome to the Planets site.
			Telescopes are your thing? The Hubble Space Telescope is hard to beat...although the Gemini Project telescope is setting a new standard for ground-based telescopes.

Design notes: I can't really claim that the idea for this page was mine...the Directorate of Time has an excellent site focussed mainly on clocks and time (of course!), along with something similar to what I have here. The basic method: I took a cylindrically projected albedo map of the moon, wrapped it around a sphere, then used POV-Ray to do the hard work of correctly lighting a sphere with a rotating light source. I've probably exaggerated the smoothness of the day-night terminator (in real life it's a little more abrupt), and over-emphasized the lighting of the moon due to the earth, but hey, does all that really matter as long as it looks nice? Thanks to CoolType for the idea of the title text, and to Chris Colefax for the excellent POV-Ray explosion routine.

Comments are welcome; please send them to caminfo < at > erikthered.com.

This page was last updated: 1999-06-22.