eight phases · a full cycle of 29.53 days
Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.
Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.
The lit fraction is drawn to scale. Northern hemisphere: a waxing crescent is lit on the right, a waning one on the left.
The Moon turns on its axis in exactly the time it takes to orbit the Earth. So one face is always turned towards us.
The opposite side gets just as much sunlight: during a new moon it’s the middle of the day over there.
So the “dark side” isn’t darkness at all — it’s simply the side we never see from Earth.
Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 3 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.
