Things were really coming along now. Brent kind of wished he had a partner, though. It was kind of late for that kind of thing now, though, since he was already halfway finished with going through the phases of the moon. Speaking of which, he probably didn't have a whole lot of time left, so he turned back to his textbook and read some more.

He found it interesting how the Full Moon was pretty much the opposite of the New Moon---in appearance and definition. He jotted down a few things then made note of that 180 degree turn. Basically, from here on out, everything just did the same as before but in the opposite direction. He made note of that, too.

Phases of the Moon

• New Moon: This is when the moon can't be seen from Earth, because the Sun is shining on the part we can't see from our planet.
• Waxing Crescent: This is when it looks like the moon looks like it's growing. It's really not, because the moon is a big rock and can't just grow and shrink. It's really just appearing more and more to us on Earth.
• First Quarter: You would think this would be a fourth of the moon, but no. This is when you see half of the moon.
• Waxing Gibbous: So what I can gather from this phase is that again, the moon looks like it is growing. However, we can just see more and more of it. The moon is about to be full during this phase.
• Full Moon: This is the moon phase where we see the full, entire moon in all its glory. The entire moon is visible from Earth, and it looks like a near-perfect circle in the sky. The moon has moved a full 180 degrees from how it was in the New Moon phase, which is why it is fully visible.
• At this point, the phases basically repeat, but the moon just appears to shrink away in the opposite direction as it now gets smaller and smaller in appearance.