Why the moon looks backwards from Australia

Look up at a young moon from the Gold Coast a few nights after new moon. The thin bright edge is on the left.

Now open almost any moon app, or most printed moon calendars. The waxing crescent is drawn lit on the right. That's the view from London or New York. It isn't the view from here.

It's the same moon, seen standing on your head

Someone in the northern hemisphere faces south to see the moon. We face north. Turn around to face the other way and the moon turns with you: what was top is now bottom, what was right is now left.

So everything flips. The waxing crescent is lit on the left. The waning crescent before dawn is lit on the right. Even the face in the moon is upside down; plenty of people down here see a rabbit instead.

A simple way to remember it

From Australia and New Zealand, a moon shaped like a C is growing, a "crescent coming". A moon shaped like a backwards C is shrinking. Up north it's the other way round.

Why it matters

If you track the moon to plan your week, your garden or your rituals, a calendar drawn for the north shows you a sky that isn't yours. The times are wrong too: a full moon on a Tuesday evening in New York happens on Wednesday morning in Brisbane.

That's why The Southern Moon 2027 is calculated for Australia and drawn the way it looks from here. The live moon at the top of this site is drawn the same way.

What did the moon look like the last time you looked up? Tell the Campfire.