About MoonPals
MoonPals is a real-clock night-sky journal for early readers (ages 6–8). It works out the shape of the Moon for tonight right here on your device — using only today's date, never your location — so you know what to look for when you go outside. Then you predict tomorrow's Moon and check the real sky: guessing first, then looking, is how scientists learn (predict → observe → explain).
The big idea, from Sol: the Sun always lights exactly half of the Moon. A "phase" is just how much of that lit half we can see from Earth tonight. As the Moon travels around us, we see a little more each night up to Full, then a little less back to New — about every 29 or 30 nights. (That is different from an eclipse, which is Earth's shadow.)
- 🌙 Luna: I make no light of my own — you only ever see the part of me the Sun is lighting.
- ☀️ Sol: I light exactly HALF of Luna, always. A phase is just how much of my lit half YOU can see tonight.
- 🦉 Pip the owl: I'm awake all night but I keep muddling the phases — will you teach me why Luna looks like this?
The eight phases you can meet. New Moon, First Quarter, Full Moon and Last Quarter are moments: each happens at one time on one day, and MoonPals uses that name only on that day. Every other night is a crescent (less than half lit) or a gibbous (more than half lit).
- New Moon — The lit half faces away from us. Luna hides in the bright day sky.
- Waxing Crescent — Less than half is lit, on the RIGHT. It grows each night.
- First Quarter — Today the RIGHT half is lit — exactly half, on its way to full.
- Waxing Gibbous — More than half is lit, and it is still growing toward full.
- Full Moon — We see the whole lit half — a bright round Moon.
- Waning Gibbous — More than half is lit, now shrinking after full.
- Last Quarter — Today the LEFT half is lit — exactly half, on its way back to new.
- Waning Crescent — Less than half is lit, on the LEFT. It shrinks each night.
These pictures show the Moon as it looks from the northern half of Earth. South of the equator the lit side is swapped, so a growing Moon is lit on the left. MoonPals guesses your half of Earth from your device's time zone name, never your location.
Honest note for grown-ups: MoonPals computes the Moon's position on this device from standard astronomical formulas (Jean Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms). Our tests check it against the US Naval Observatory's published phase times for 2025–2028, and it agrees to within a few minutes. The picture and the percentage show the Moon at 9 in the evening on your clock. Clouds, and where the Moon is in the sky, still decide what you see, so the habit is to look up and check. It is a sky-watching habit, not a promise of a score. Everything runs on this device; there are no accounts, no ads, and nothing a child does leaves the device.