over the moon

so this summer my very smart and observant friend and i noticed something we hadn't known before. sometimes the moon sliver was facing one way, sometimes the other. (suddenly i was curious as to how it is most often depicted in children's books) it had different rising and setting patterns. so we started studying the moon. we knew the basics, like the moon revolves around the earth and the earth revolves around the sun, but that was about as far as 5th grade science carried into my adulthood (thank you, charity masterson, wherever you are, for helping me spray paint the styrofoam balls representing the solar system for our elementary school science fair). i learned waxing (sliver faces left) on the way to being full and waning (sliver faces right) on the way to a new moon. the handy dandy calendar of moonrise and set helped me understand the moon's influence over the tides as well. i'm sketching the moon every day for the month of september to document what i've noticed. my smart and observant friend is watching the moon, too. she just sent me a text with two new vocabulary words and up to the minute lunar information. it seems that this monday at 10:30 pm we will see a perigee moon, when it is closest to the earth, also called a "supermoon" (222,731 miles when it rises as compared to 252,205 later in the month on september 20). apogee is when it is furthest from the earth. to track your own celestial objects, check out www.timeanddate.com and click on "sun & moon".