The Daily: 12 August 2026

Today the Hay Moon goes dark at 1:36pm my time. It will be dark at this same moment all around the globe, so unless you live in the Eastern Time Zone, the Moon will be dark at some other hour of your day. (For example, in Valencia, Spain, the Moon goes dark at 7:36pm local time.) In this round of passing between the Earth and the Sun, the Moon is positioned just right to totally block out the Sun along a hairpin path that runs from the northernmost tip of Russia, up over the Arctic, back down to Greenland, Iceland, and then straight through eastern Spain. The path of totality meets with sunset in the middle of the Mediterranean. At that moment, the eclipse will still be sliding over the Earth’s surface, but Earthlings under the eclipse path will not be able to see it because the Earth will have rotated away from the Sun. In other words, night will fall on the eclipse in the middle of the sea. Which would be a breathtakingly beautiful thing to see! If you have boat…

Most of the world will not see a total eclipse (except online). In Vermont skies, like much of Europe, the far northwest of Africa, much of the eastern US, the Upper Midwest, and Canada, there will be a partial solar eclipse. That is, the Earth, Moon and Sun will not be sufficiently aligned to block the Sun completely, but there will be a bite out of the sun of variable size depending upon where you are. Here in Vermont, it is a small bite. In Morocco, the Sun will be reduced to a thin crescent. But under all these partial eclipses, daylight will only be dimmed, not dark, with the darkening of the Moon. The path of totality is the only sliver of Earth where you will be able to see a diamond ring in the sky, stars twinkling in the waking hours, and a general hush on the natural world with wind and birds falling silent as the Sun goes dark. (Here is a good map of the eclipse paths.)

I am something of an eclipse junkie. I have been staying up late to watch the Moon turn red with eclipses and have traveled to be in the path of totality for solar eclipses for my entire life. Vermont was wondrously blessed with a total solar eclipse two years ago, and my sons and I got to watch, sitting right on my front porch steps. I have taken time off from work to watch today’s eclipse. (Also it is a Dark Moon Day for me…) I once closed my bookstore — or rather, turned off the registers, but left the doors open — to throw an eclipse party in the parking lot behind the store, where my employees, family, friends and quite a few customers all watched a late afternoon deep partial eclipse as the sun was westering. We had telescopes with sun filters and paper with holes punched out to see the weird crescent shapes of the projected sunlight. We took photos of crescent shaped shadows which seemed to render our hands and arms into alien forms. And we ate a potluck dinner in folding chairs under somber, ruddy light as a crescent Sun sank into the west.

Vermont will not see crescents today. The chunk of moon-shadow on the Sun will barely be perceptible except as a greying of the light. It will seem as if a thin haze has covered the skies, even if the skies are clear. It’s a bit disorienting… and that’s what I love about the experience. As we lose the comfort of the expected, we see what actually is. It is, paradoxically, profoundly grounding when you temporarily lose your sense of order. You discover that much of that neat orderly sense is completely fabricated by the nervous system and doesn’t actually convey reality. So, you can become newly oriented through this disorientation…

This experience reminds me that everything is relational, and that all those relationships are rooted, located in particular time and space. It’s so easy to forget that central fact in our culture. In fact, we are encouraged to forget. Not only that we are embodied in a particular place, but that our lives are created by and adapted to our places. Those relationships are what make me me. My eclipse experience will not be yours, and yours will not be mine; and that difference in experience is largely what makes up the distinction between us.

If you live in northwestern Africa, you will be able to project crescents on the walls. If you live in Iceland, and it is characteristically cloudy, you will find yourself in deep darkness in the middle of the early autumn afternoon. If you live in Minnesota you may see nothing at all, though you are in the path of the partial eclipse. What can be more grounding than being able to see the result of this geometrical dance in the skies directly over your head and knowing that it is different everywhere else — but happening at the same time, so that everybody is having their varied experiences at the exact same moment! That knowledge definitely grounds the body in the real world.

Humans have been watching the skies for as long as we’ve been humans. Early in our story, we created ways to predict astronomical treats like eclipses. I have heard it said that we feared the Blood Moon and the darkness covering the Sun, but I’m pretty sure that’s bunk. For one thing, there’s absolutely nothing to fear, and any idiot can see that. No harm, no uncanny evil. Just a beautiful moment, a brief pause in the daily round to wonder at this marvelous world. And, truly, it is nothing short of miraculous that the relative diameters of the Moon and Sun and the Earth’s distance from the Sun are so exactly matched as to make eclipses possible. I would wager that Earth might be one of a very few places in the entire universe where you can see a diamond ring in the sky.

(A further bittersweet but intriguing aspect of this geometry is that the alignment is slowly breaking down. The Earth is moving away from the Sun, and the Moon is drifting away from the Earth. This cumulative drift means that Earthlings will no longer be able to see a total solar eclipse around 600 million years from now. And the peak of solar eclipse viewing came long ago when Life was confined to the seas. Even now, annular and partial eclipses are far more common than totality. Chew on that 4-D geometry for a while…)

But as to our ancestors being afraid of eclipses, well, there’s weighty evidence to the contrary. Our ancestors spent quite a lot of effort to create viewing centers for astronomical events. What is Stonehenge but a stadium for the skies! Hundreds of people could gather in places like Avebury and Newgrange. They came together for seasonal festivals, celebrating the solstices and the equinoxes. They gathered for moonrises and moonsets on days they felt were important. They watched for the rising of various constellations to mark the passage of the year.

I am quite sure they also gathered for eclipses. They certainly knew how to predict them. As long as there have been written records, there have been eclipse calculations. And the early Irish peoples carved an eclipse in stone as early as 3000BC, over a millennium before Stonehenge was built. I expect our ancestors anticipated these moments of pure beauty with the same quivering joy that I feel today. And they probably cherished stories of the their personal eclipse experiences, the gemstone beauty of a total eclipse that they viewed as a child or the crescent shadows they watched as an old woman, passing on these stories like drops of moonlight shining through the generations.

If anything, we moderns are less sky savvy and more prone to fear and confusion than our ancient ancestors. Our disconnect from the world leaves us far more apprehensive about a great many things, especially things that go bump in the night or that are associated with darkness. So we are the fearful ones and we project our terrors onto our “primitive” ancestors — who knew enough about the night skies to engineer enormous stone calendars that still keep perfect sky-time. So… who is the primitive?

I thought I might repost my Moon-splaining essay today. It doesn’t talk much specifically about eclipses, but it will help you wrap your head around the geometry of today.

But if you live in the path of the eclipse, do not spend time staring at a screen. Go out and watch it. It will not last long. And it may not come again in your lifetime… unless you, like me, find yourself drawn to chase the intersection of the Dark Moon or the Full Moon with the Sun and the Earth… I warn you, these experiences are highly addictive.

A Moon Intervention

Long an irksome pull at the Math Lady lodged in my left brain, this evening I decided I’d had enough with Moon dis-logic. Time for an intervention. Moon 101 for writers of all shades. Here is the imagery that pushed Math Lady over the edge:

Facing south in the evening, she “looked over her shoulder
and saw a waning crescent peek out from beyond the hilltops.”

And Math Lady ground her teeth and began this post.

I believe our inability to comprehend the moon’s geometry is rooted in our anthropocentric languages. These languages evolved under a view of the cosmos in which the Earth is the still center and the universe drifts around her in concentric rings. The Moon rises. The Sun sets in the west. The stars whirl overhead (save the Pole Star, which really ought to have been the first clue that language was clouding our perception).

It makes me long to know the languages of our Neolithic ancestors, those that worked in the first silicon time-keeping technology (many thanks to Sir Terry Pratchett for that endlessly useful characterization). These ancients worked massive stone in ways that testify to a clear understanding of sky geometry. They placed massive granite and slate in configurations marking sky events  — and made no mistakes. We can still use their clocks thousands of years later. If they believed that the Moon rose and set around a fixed Earth, their calendars would have failed.

The Moon does not rise. The Earth beneath your feet turns toward the Moon wherever he is in the heavens. Furthermore, the Moon does not rise in the evening. As the Moon hurtles around the Earth and the Earth hurtles around the Sun, we can see the Moon in various guises in the daylight just as often as the night. There are not three phases of the Moon; he looks different every day of the month. There are perhaps four phases, though full and new are not properly included.

This next might not need to be said, except Math Lady is including it for completeness: there is no change to the Moon. The Moon does not physically wax and wan. We see more or less of it from our perspective on Earth based on the Moon’s position in its orbit. And no, this is not because the Moon is in the shadow of our planet. That does happen a few times a year. Only on the Full Moon. We call this a lunar eclipse; it looks very different from a Dark Moon because it is a very different optical effect. 

The appearance of waxing and waning is caused by a fixed light source, the Sun, shining on a sphere, the Moon, that is traversing a ring and being observed from a third point, the Earth. Take a large ball into a dark room and shine a bright flashlight on it. To really get this image imprinted in your mind, grab a couple friends to assist you. One person is the Sun with the flashlight. One person is the Moon with the ball. One person is the Earthling, watching this all happen. The Sun is stationary, though it does help to have the flashlight beam follow the ball. The flashlight beam is much smaller than the Sun’s light bath. The Earth is also stationary — maybe crouched down a little to keep out of the flashlight beam — and will turn around to watch the Moon. The Moon person should hold the ball extended up from the body and keep it in the flashlight beam. 

Start with the Moon and Sun on opposite sides of the Earth person. What shape is presented to the earth? A disk. This is the Full Moon. Note that this is the only time when it is possible for the Moon to be in the Earth’s shadow, but it is not normally in the Earth’s shadow. That perfect alignment to throw blood on the Moon is unusual. Most months the Moon opposite the Sun is bright and full in the sky, the Full Moon.

Now the Moon begins a monthly orbit of the Earth. The Moon person should walk around the Earth while the Earth watches the light on the surface of the ball. The disk appears to contract. It does not look like a bite has been taken out of the Moon; the curves are convex on both sides. This shape is named gibbous, from a Latin word meaning “humped”. It helps immensely to remember this word and its meaning when picturing the Moon in orbit. Since in this example the Moon is moving away from the full position and the lighted portion is shrinking, we call this leg of the month’s journey the waning gibbous Moon. There is also a waxing gibbous phase.

When the Moon person is standing to the side of the Earth person making a right angle from Sun to Earth to Moon, the lighted portion of the ball is now a half-circle. It has a straight side and a curved side. It is not a crescent. This is important to keep in mind because the language we use to name this position calls it the quarter Moon. It is not a quarter; it is a half. In this experiment, this is the waning quarter Moon, the third quarter. 

This is probably a good time to jump out of the experiment and deal with language again. The Moon takes 29-ish days to travel around the Earth. We start counting the days at the Dark Moon, when the Moon is between the Sun and the Earth (opposite of where we began our experiment). There are seven days and a few hours in the Moon’s journey from dark to the first quarter — when the Moon is to the side of the Earth — a bit over seven days again to full, same to the third quarter, and seven final days back to new. This makes four weeks. This is not a coincidence. Because all of us have Math Lady in our heads, we like to map things into easy groupings. We divided the Moon’s journey into quarters and called those quarters “weeks”, four of which then make up a month, a lunation — the Moon’s cycle.

So back to the Moon experiment. As the Moon moves from the side of the Earth to a position opposite of full when it is between the Earth and Sun, it continues to contract. But this is when the lighted portion takes on a crescent shape. One side convex; one concave. This is the crescent moon; and as the gibbous shape happens twice, the crescent does as well. It is a crescent in the first — waxing — and fourth — waning — quarters when it is nearer to the Sun. It is gibbous in the second — waxing — and third — waning — quarters when it further from the Sun. The crescent becomes smaller as the Moon heads closer to the Sun until the Moon is between the Sun and the Earth. And now what shape is lit? None, from the position of the earth. The Sun shines on the Moon face that is facing toward the Sun — and away from the Earth. This is not a shadow. It is merely that the light is hitting the Moon on its far side. We see the dark side of the Moon (cue Pink Floyd).

Here is another point at which the Sun, Moon and Earth are in alignment. When the Moon is between the Earth and Sun it is possible to have a solar eclipse. Again, this perfect alignment is not normal, but the Dark Moon is the only time the Moon casts a shadow on the Earth. In a solar eclipse we do not see the Moon’s face because the light of the Sun is so much brighter than the pale earth-shine that casts light on a lunar eclipse and gives the eclipsed Moon its rosy glow.

Our culture calls this position with the Moon between the Sun and Earth the New Moon. I don’t like that nomenclature because it is historically inaccurate and physically sloppy. Those cultures that used a lunar calendar (and there have been more of them than those that keep sun time), often began a month with the first sighting of the crescent setting in the west. This was the New Moon. There were folks with the sole task of watching for that slim curve to appear, so the new month could be started. Remember, the cycle is 29-ish days; so first sight of the setting crescent did not occur at a set time each cycle. Hence the need for an official to watch for the new month to begin.

They may have had no name for the completely darkened disk; we don’t seem to have preserved it at any rate. So I call this position the Dark Moon. It is the last day of the old cycle, not the first day of the new. The New Moon is the next day in my world. If you want to be particular, the New Moon is when that crescent hangs above the sunset. But I’m getting too old for particularity. I don’t get paid to watch for it, and here in the New England hills I’d rarely be able to see it, at any rate. So my shorthand is that New Moon follows the day after the Dark Moon.

So you’ve probably seen the rest of the experiment in your mind, but just because Math Lady will belabor any point… As the Moon heads back around the other side of the Earth, the lighted portion visible from Earth will again expand. It will be a waxing crescent, the first quarter, from the New Moon to the point where the Moon is to the side of the Earth again. From this half-moon shape to the Full Moon, it will be a waxing gibbous Moon. And then the Moon ball is back to where we began the experiment. Of course, the month usually begins just after the dark face, not at the full face, but I think it’s easier to see the geometry if you start with a full disk — more intuitive or something. Anyway, there is no precise beginning to the cycle; it’s all human convention.

Now that we’ve got the phases (shapes) of the cycle down, let’s bring that quote back: A waning crescent is hanging in the evening sky, no indication of which direction “over her shoulder”. (It actually reads like she is looking north… where the moon never hangs.) But the direction does not matter; a waning crescent is never hanging in the evening sky. If there is a crescent, it is waxing and it is in the west.

This is the geometry that is rather hard to illustrate with balls and flashlights. So I’m just going to baldly lay it out.

At the first of the moon cycle, the Moon is a slight crescent in the western evening sky. It begins its journey very close to the Sun, rising in the east and setting in the west just after the Sun. It is following the Sun. In the next week it will become a fatter crescent, and it will drift east away from the Sun’s position in the sky. It rises and sets a bit further from the Sun each day.

At the half-moon stage, the beginning of the second quarter (week), the Moon rises when the Sun is highest in the sky — midday — and it sets in the middle of the night. The waxing gibbous Moon is the phase that we most notice in the day sky. It is large enough to be visible in daylight and it spends many hours high in the sky during daylight. 

During the second quarter the waxing gibbous Moon grows fatter and rises later. When it hits the full disk, the Moon is rising in the east as the Sun sets in the west. Through the third quarter, the Moon passes into the waning gibbous shape. It rises later each day until, at the half-moon shape at the beginning of the fourth quarter, the Moon will rise in the east in the middle of the night and set in the west in the middle of the day. The waning crescent rises later in the dark hours, or if you prefer, later in the early morning hours closer and closer to dawn, until the Dark Moon rises and sets with the Sun.

So how about those ubiquitous literary tropes that the Moon rises as the sun is setting? That the Moon is night and the Sun is day? Or how about all those references to rising crescent Moons? The waning crescent is only visible in the early morning sky. It is leading the sun — it rises in the dark hours before the dawn and sets in the west ahead of the sunset. As that last week in the Moon’s cycle draws to a close it becomes too slim to be easily seen in daylight. Thus most of us never see a waning crescent Moon at all! But it will never be seen in the evening sky.

I have seen examples of Moon dis-logic literally everywhere. It is pervasive in every genre, even science fiction, where one might expect a bit more familiarity with the solar system. Yes, even in nature writing, I’ve read descriptions of the newly risen crescent Moon in the evening sky — which is not a thing — from people who are supposed to be observing the phenomena they record. In theory… And it doesn’t stop with words. There are whole swaths of people that seem to believe that the Moon passes from crescent to full back to crescent with nary a blobby gibbous step in between. I’ve seen images of a thin moon hanging in the gloaming labeled as “Moon-rise”. I’ve noticed that people often talk as though the Moon is visible in the night sky, all night, perhaps every night, and notably only at night — when all of us can see the Moon in the daylight many days out of every month.

I guess I’m saying we all need a Moon intervention. Time to recalibrate our clocks and see what actually is. Though… that is true of very many things today. 

And now recalibrate your own clock and find out when the Moon and Earth and Sun come into alignment in your skies. Perhaps you are lucky and will see a diamond ring in the daytime darkness. Perhaps there will be crescent shadows. Perhaps you will merely see a dimming of the Sun. Or maybe you will see nothing at all of the eclipse — and that, too, is interesting! Look at the map of totality. Try to wrap your head around the geometry of the path. Understand fully what it means to be in your particular place and with your peculiar relations to the universe. It is mind-boggling… and that is a very healthy thing to be some days…

If you live where there will be no moon-shadow and you still want to see it, there are plenty of folks who point filtered cameras at the spectacle and send the images streaming around the world. Find out when totality happens in your part of the world and find a screen that is projecting that image. (Here is NASA. And here is Time&Date.)

Or don’t break out the screens… just imagine it.

This is especially meaningful when totality is happening on the other side of the world, in other words, in the middle of your night. It’s interesting to think that night comes to both sides of the planet at this one instant. You are standing under the darkness of space, facing away from the Sun. Those under the eclipse are standing under the darkness of the Moon’s shadow, facing toward the Sun. And when you can see this in your head, you understand viscerally what it means to be living on a globe, on this globe, our Earth, with our satellite, the Moon, and our star, the Sun, all in a dance through time and space.

©Elizabeth Anker 2026