MOON PHASES
What order do the
Moon phases follow?
New → waxing crescent → first quarter → waxing gibbous → full → waning gibbous → last quarter → waning crescent, repeating in about 29.5 days.
Eight labels make the cycle easy to scan
New Moon
0%The sunlit half faces mostly away from Earth; the Moon stays near the Sun in our sky.
Waxing Crescent
1–49%A thin right-hand crescent appears in the western evening sky in the Northern Hemisphere.
First Quarter
about 50%Half the visible disk is lit and the Moon is prominent in the evening.
Waxing Gibbous
51–99%The bright area grows each night on the way to full.
Full Moon
about 100%The Moon rises near sunset and can remain visible for most of the night.
Waning Gibbous
99–51%The illuminated area shrinks after full Moon and rises later each night.
Last Quarter
about 50%Half the disk is lit; the Moon rises around midnight.
Waning Crescent
49–1%A thin crescent is best seen before sunrise in the east.
The Moon moves; Earth's shadow is not causing the daily phases
The Sun always illuminates half of the Moon. As the Moon orbits Earth, our viewing angle changes, so we see a changing fraction of that sunlit half. Earth's shadow only darkens the Moon during a lunar eclipse.
Check today's phaseReference
The sequence and geometry follow NASA's Moon Phases explainer.
NASA Moon Phases ↗