Yesterday afternoon, the conditions were right on the Blue Hill Peninsula to get a good daylight view of the rising moon. This month’s moon orbit is fairly close to the earth (about 238,937 miles away now) and there will be a full moon tomorrow. Thus, yesterday’s moon was almost “full” (100 percent illumination); it was more than half full and getting full (“waxing gibbous”).
Yesterday, the low-slanting light from the setting sun caught the rising moon and illuminated it before it rose very high relative to us. Thus, at 5 p.m. in darkening Connery Cove, we could make out the moon’s craters with unaided eyes and see them fairly clearly with relatively low enlargement (e.g., a 200 mm lens here).
(Blue Hill, Maine)