The revolution of the Moon around the Earth makes the Moon appear as if it is changing shape in the sky. This is caused by the different angles from which we see the bright part of the Moon's surface. These are called 'phases' of the Moon.
The Moon passes through four major shapes during a cycle that repeats itself every 29.5 days. The moon phases always follow one another in the same order. What you see when you look at the moon depends on its location in relationship to the sun and Earth.
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I'm probably overly pedantic, but it has annoyed me for a long time that "crescent" means a slim intersection of circles only because of its
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Crescent means "growing" and the shape has become associated with that phase of the moon. In the northern hemisphere, the crescent moon has a D-shaped curve (light on the right), and metaphorically, it has been associated with both the Islamic world and the Mongol empire of Genghis Khan, to imply that each was at the beginning of a period of fertile growth.
Unfortunately, astronomic- and Latin-illiterates, probably influenced by left-to-right reading order in Western alphabets, have reversed the symbol to the C shape, which should properly be denoted as Decrescent (decreasing).
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