Moon phases, explained: how the lunar cycle sets your dark-sky nights
The single biggest thing standing between you and a good night under the stars isn’t your gear, your location, or even the weather. It’s the Moon. A full Moon can raise the brightness of the whole sky enough to erase the Milky Way, wash out every meteor fainter than a fireball, and flatten a galaxy into a grey smudge. A week later the same sky, from the same spot, with the same eyes, shows all of it. Nothing changed but the phase. ...