Bright moonlight can illuminate an earthly landscape on nights when the moon is full. Now think about seeing a full moon from Earth’s surface. When we see a crescent moon in the west after sunset, or in the east before dawn, we’re seeing just a sliver of the moon’s lighted half. To understand earthshine, remember that the moon is a globe, just as Earth is, and moreover that the globe of the moon is always half-illuminated by sunlight just like Earth. Love watching the moon? Keep track of its phases for every day in 2022 with an EarthSky lunar calendar. You’ll have to wait a day or two after March 3 to catch the slim crescent and earthshine. And the autumn angle of the ecliptic is always narrow with respect to the evening horizon. Southern Hemisphere? It’s autumn now in your part of the world. If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, the month of March, around the March equinox, is an excellent time to look for very young moons, that is, slim crescent moons in the west after sunset. That pale glow on the unlit part of a crescent moon is light reflected from Earth. When you look at a crescent moon shortly after sunset or before sunrise, you can sometimes see not only the bright crescent of the moon, but also the rest of the moon as a dark disk. So you’ll want to start looking for a very slim crescent moon – low in the sky after sunset – on March 3.

In 2022, the March new moon fell on March 2 at 17:35 UTC.

Photo by Aqilla Othman at Port Dickson, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. The pale glow on the dark part of the moon – earthshine – is light from a nearly full Earth, seen from the Earth-facing side of the moon.

Underneath this pale moon sky