What is the Moon doing in September? |
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The Moon in September |
In general, we can tell what the Moon will look like, when it will be visible, and in what direction to look for it, just by working out how many days it is since New Moon. The details are here. But we can predict this more accurately by noticing that the Moon mimics, every month, the way the Sun behaves over the course of a whole year. Here is a schematic diagram of how the Moon behaves in September.
At New Moon, the Moon behaves like the Sun in September. It's
heading southwards, so it spends less time above the horizon every
day. The time of moonrise gets much later every day; the time
of moonset doesn't change much from one night to the next. So we have
to wait a long time before we can see the crescent Moon after sunset.
On any date, if you know how many
days it is since New Moon:
multiply that by twelve, and add it to the present date, to find out
roughly where the Moon will be in its cycle.
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