The old moon in the new moon’s arms

I’ve been pondering the moon in my pictures. The last illustrations I did featured a full moon but it was new moon when I did them. I looked through some of my other pictures – for example my “Wooden Man” – and there are many crescent moons and all of them sit facing to the right.

My boyfriend told me that the moon doesn’t look like this in the northern hemisphere evening. So I checked out the moon the other night. It is currently waxing, creeping up high and visible in the western sky and it was definitely facing with its glow on its eastern side. My photo doesn’t show it very well.

However, I don’t mind which way around it is in my pictures…

Another thing I’ve heard about the moon at the moment, is its “earthshine”. How lovely, the moon picking up the glow from the earth! This is also known as “the old moon in the new moon’s arms”. There’s something beautiful about that! I couldn’t see any earthshine last night but I’ll know to keep looking in future.

Another special moon feature I saw once was over Victoria Falls. It was quite a long time ago and I vaguely remember the thundering waters. I went out at night with a full moon, and there it was, a moonbow glimmering magically over the waters. It was very special. Moonbows are lunar rainbows formed by light from the moon instead of the sun. They are rarer than rainbows but just as beautiful.

Here is a picture I did last weekend entitled “Writing by the Moon”. I enhanced the blue colour in photoshop and now it has an underwater quality to it!