The First Quarter is done. Dust in the wind. Now we are stuck in the Waxing Gibbous phase, watching that silver orb swell with a slow, relentless appetite.
As of Sunday, June 22, the moon is 64 percent lit, says NASA.
Sixty-four percent. That’s a lot of moon. And it won’t stop until the thing is full, a glowing dinner plate hanging in the sky.
What you can see tonight
Grab binoculars. Or don’t, your eyes work fine for this part. With the naked eye, you can spot the major dark patches: the Mares Fecunditatis, Serenity, and Tranquillity. They look like scars, but they’re just ancient lava fields, cool and dead.
Zoom in if you want the details. Binoculars bring up Archimedes and Posidonius craters, plus Mare Nectaris. A telescope? Sure. You’ll see the Caucasus Mountains. The Descartes Highlands. The Rima Hyginus fault. It’s a lot to process for a Tuesday night sky, isn’t it?
The Full Moon is coming
Hold on for eight days. The next Full Moon hits on June 29. Until then, we watch the shadow retreat, inch by inch, as the moon chugs toward its peak illumination.
How this wheel spins
The moon doesn’t make its own light. It reflects the sun. Orbiting Earth in a cycle that lasts roughly 29.5 days. It moves through eight recognized stages. Same side always faces us—locked in that eternal stare—but the light hits it from different angles. One minute it’s a sliver. Next month, it’s blazing. We call it the lunar cycle, which is just a fancy way of saying it’s going in circles again.
Here is how it plays out:
- New Moon — It’s between Earth and the Sun. Dark side facing us. Invisible. Ghost mode.
- Waxing Crescent — A thin slice of light shows up on the right, if you’re up north.
- First Quarter — Half lit on the right. Looks like a half-moon because, well, it is one.
- Waxing Gibbous — Where we are now. More than half, but not quite the whole story.
- Full Moon — All lit up. The face is fully visible, bright, unavoidable.
- Waning Gibbous — Light starts slipping off the right edge.
- Third Quarter — Another half, but this time the left side glows.
- Waning Crescent — A final, thin ghost of light on the left before it vanishes.
Then it starts again. Dark to light, light to dark. We keep watching, wondering what all that dark matter looks like when no one is looking.
