On 2008-07-15, Christine K wrote:
kirjoitti:
Yowie wrote:

The odd thing about Australia (and hte rest of hte southern hemisphere) is
our moon is upseide down, and the phases go ( 0 ) rather than ) 0 ( like
yours do.

It's not the moon that's upside down, it's you guys. (Kidding )

But that's interesting, and it makes sense, since the earth's shadow would
getting larger and smaller in the opposite direction.

My education about celestial bodies was quite pitiful. Considering that
I was interested in astronomy, I didn't even know which direction the
moon waxed and waned. A friend of mine taught it to me about 5 years ago,
complete with a handy mnemonic. (It wouldn't work for most of us, since
the words are in Russian and the letters representing the orientation of
the crescent moon are Cyrillic - but for some reason I remember that better
than anything I learned in childhood!)


My memory help for when the moon is waxing is tied to Swedish, but it
works for English too. The moon is waxing, or "coming", when it
resembles a comma, or ).


The Moon waxes until it is full and then it wanes.

Bud