Moon shot

Pluto and friend

I will freely admit that most three-year-olds know more about what's up in outer space than I do. I must have been out sick the day they taught us that in elementary school. I can't keep it straight whether the earth revolves around the sun or the moon, or if we sit still and Pluto and the rest of them spin around us, and at this stage of my life (late) it hardly seems to matter. If any kids hover around me and start asking questions about the cosmos, I can just tell them to run and get a mask, and while they go look for one, I hide.

However, the good old Washington POST publishes a page called KidsPost, and I can glean a lot of good information on that. F'rinstance, how does it come that we see the moon during the daytime sometimes, huh? I'm grateful that they put it in terms a child can comprehend. Let me paraphrase...

The moon and the stars are up there all the time. We just can't see them all the time.  (I happen to know that the sun spends its nights in other parts of the world).

Ask Cheyenne Polius. She's an astrophysicist, and president and co-founder of the Saint Lucia National Astronomy Association in the Caribbean region.

When we have a new moon (that's when it all starts over) the the half moon that the sun lights up is facing away from us here on Earth. So the moon is still there (don't worry) but it's invisible to us during the day, what with all that sunlight being reflected in the other direction.

Then, the moon goes on a trip around Earth, and little by little more of it is visible, starting off as a crescent or half moon.

“The best time to see the moon during the day is when it’s in the first and last quarter phases (90 degrees away from the sun) because that’s when we can see half of the moon’s lit side while the sun is still up,” Polius says.

Then when the moon is halfway through spinning its way through an orbit, it gets behind the earth, as far as the sun is concerned, and we get to see the entire full moon at night.

The picture of the new moon below just gave me a jarring memory. I WAS in school that day. The kids sitting near me reported hearing a thud as I fell asleep and onto the floor.