Natural Science - Astronomy

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1/ The moon rises in the East and sets in the West every night, although it was hard to see on days when the moon is near the sun in the sky. However, based on my observations, real motion of the moon around the earth is in the west to east direction. For the first few days of its phase, the moon slowly moved from west to southwest, then to east and northeast. For example: Observation 1, the moon was waxing crescent and was in west direction. Observation 5, the moon was waxing gibbous, in southwest direction. Observation 6, the moon was in east direction, waxing gibbous phase. Observation 11, the moon was in southwest direction and it was in waxing gibbous phase. Observation 16, the moon was full moon and it was in southeast direction After carefully noticing its position compared to some nearby stars, I can see that in one hour, the moon’s position relatively to the stars changed by one moon – diameter. 2/ The moon rises and sets later than the last time I observed. I noticed that the moon rises and sets approximately 50 minutes later than the night before. Here are some changes that I noticed: Moon phase | East (Rise) | Southeast | South | Southwest | West (set) | Waxing Gibbous | Afternoon | Dusk | Evening | Midnight | Pre-dawn | Full moon | Dusk | Evening | Midnight | Pre-dawn | Dawn | 3/ The sequence of moon shapes that I observed were Waxing Crescent (observation 1 – 3) to Waxing Gibbous (observation 4 – 8) that stretched out till it reached full moon. During Waning Gibbous and New Moon, the moon is below the horizon, I couldn’t observe the changes of the moon. Between the phases – waxing crescent, waxing gibbous, and full moon– I noticed that the waxing gibbous (observation 4 – 8) and (observation 11 – 15) took a few days to evolve and move on in the cycle. 4/ The sun always illuminates one-half of the moon, but I could only see it at

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