The moon seems to change

The moon seems to change

Tonight take a look at the sky. See if the moon is there.

It may be big and round. It is a full moon. Maybe you will see only part of it. It may be a quarter moon. Or it may be only a little sliver. It is called a crescent moon. As the nights go by you can see changes in the moon. After the moon is full you see less and less of it. There are three or four nights with no moon at all. Then you see more and more of it. The moon seems to change.

It really doesn't. It seems to change because the moon goes around Earth. As it goes around, we see more of it-the moon gets bigger. It is a waxing moon. Or we see less of it-the moon gets smaller. It is a waning moon. Half of the moon is always lighted by the sun. Half is lighted and half is always in darkness. It's the same with Earth, While one half of Earth is having sunshine and daylight, the other half is getting no sunshine. It is night.

A day on Earth is 24 hours long. A day on the moon is almost a month long. It takes the moon about four weeks to go around Earth.

As the moon goes around Earth, it is sometimes between Earth and the sun. The dark half of the moon is facing us. We cannot see any of the lighted half. , This is called new moon. A night or two later the moon has moved a little bit along its path around Earth. We can then see a small part of the lighted half, It is called a crescent moon. We see it just after sunset, It is in the west, where we seethe sun go down. You may be able to see it before the sky is dark, Sometimes you can see it in daytime.