Uploaded January 2019 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The Moon's elliptical orbit around Earth means it's sometimes closer and sometimes farther away from us. This video shows its changing distance from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2019, as if we are orbiting the Sun along with the pair looking at the Moon's orbit edge-on. You can see the Moon moving left and right, as well as the changing phase (proportion of lit area) of both — when the Sun is behind you, you see both fully lit (a solid disk), and when the Sun is on the other side both are dark. In between, you see various amounts of crescent.The Earth's spin is to scale as well, so each rotation is one day; the Moon takes about a month to orbit the Earth once.
Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
Original video: svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=4442
The Moon's elliptical orbit around Earth means it's sometimes closer and sometimes farther away from us. This video shows its changing distance from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2019, as if we are orbiting the Sun along with the pair looking at the Moon's orbit edge-on. You can see the Moon moving left and right, as well as the changing phase (proportion of lit area) of both — when the Sun is behind you, you see both fully lit (a solid disk), and when the Sun is on the other side both are dark. In between, you see various amounts of crescent.The Earth's spin is to scale as well, so each rotation is one day; the Moon takes about a month to orbit the Earth once.
Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
Original video: svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=4442
