Where to look for the Moon

When you looked for the Moon at the same time each day, at sunrise say, was it in the same place? No, and the shift follows a rule.

On full Moon day the Moon is nearly opposite the Sun. So as the Sun rises in the east, the full Moon is setting in the west.

On the mornings after, as its bright part shrinks, the Moon seems to move closer to the Sun in the sky. At half Moon it is overhead at sunrise. A few days later, as a thin crescent, it is closer to the rising Sun still.

So if you know the phase, and whether it's waxing or waning, you know where to look:

This also means the Moon doesn't rise and set at the same times as the Sun. Many people think the Moon rises when the Sun sets, but that's often not true.

Look up moonrise times for your area in a newspaper or on the website of the India Meteorological Department's Positional Astronomy Centre, for several days in a row. The Moon rises about 50 minutes later each day. In one day the Earth turns once, but meanwhile the Moon has moved a little farther along its orbit, so the Earth has to turn a bit more to catch up with it.

Sometimes the Moon rises in the afternoon, around 2 to 4 p.m. That's how you can see it in the eastern sky in daylight, just as Meera did. (Give it about 30 minutes after the listed time to climb high enough to see.)