The Moon That Night
The night someone was born. A wedding. The night you met. The night you lost someone. See the Moon exactly as it hung over any town on Earth, on any night from 1700 to 2200: computed for the actual moment, never guessed from a date, and checkable before you pay.
This is the sheet itself, drawn in your browser for the night you picked. It prints about 8 by 10 inches with the Moon around four inches across, and the purchase delivers it at print resolution.
This preview needs JavaScript: with it on, the sheet renders here for any night you pick, computed in your browser. Without it, the watermarked sample link still returns a real sheet for the example night.
With no occasion, dedication or theme chosen, the Occasion Edition prints the same sheet as The Sheet, and adds only the 8×10, 11×14 and A4 masters.
Showing the sample night. Pick your own date and place to buy.
Your purchase includes a photo-counter file. Drugstore and supermarket counters print from images rather than PDFs, so this is your sheet as an 8×10 JPEG at 300 dots per inch, drawn here in your browser: upload it the way you would a photograph and ask for an 8×10. The PDF masters on your download page remain the ones for a print shop.
Yours the moment you pay, no shipping deadline Prices in US dollars; Stripe adds and remits any tax for your country Payment by Stripe Full refund within 30 days No account, ever Questions go to a person: info@cyclecalcs.com The astronomy is public: an open-source engine tested against NASA JPL Horizons
What arrives: a PDF, the moment payment confirms. It is on the page you land on, and the link is emailed to the address you pay with, so it is in your inbox as well as your browser. The Sheet is US Letter; the Occasion Edition adds 8×10, 11×14 and A4 masters. Either edition also gives you the sheet as an 8×10 JPEG for a photo counter.
Getting it onto paper. Three routes, and all three are covered. A home printer: choose borderless if it offers it, and the heaviest paper it takes. A copy or print shop, which gives the best result: Staples, FedEx Office and Office Depot in the US, Ryman or a local printer in the UK and Europe. Hand over the PDF as it is and ask for the size you want on heavy matte, printed at 100 percent, no scaling. And a drugstore or supermarket photo counter - CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, Costco, Boots in the UK - which prints from images rather than PDFs: your purchase includes the sheet as an 8×10 JPEG at 300 dots per inch for exactly that, so you upload it the way you would a holiday photograph and collect an 8×10. Each counter sets its own price for an 8×10, so check theirs before you go; it is the cheapest of the three routes and needs no printer at all. The sheet is yours to print as often as you like, anywhere you like, and the lunar photograph is NASA's, in the public domain.
Check the thing itself before you buy it. Download this night as a watermarked PDF, free Or in 8×10, 11×14 or A4, the masters the Occasion Edition adds. No customer reviews yet: this is a new product, and we will not invent any.
Also free, no purchase needed: the share card, in the size shown above. Made by CycleCalcs LLC, the same engine behind the moon calendar and the public API.
The preview and every number above are computed in your browser by the same open-source engine behind every page on this site, and place search is answered from a place index served with the page: no place, date or dedication you pick is sent anywhere, though our analytics counts anonymously that a render, a card download or a checkout happened, and whether an occasion was chosen at all. The two PDF surfaces and checkout are the deliberate exceptions: the watermarked sample and the purchased sheet are rendered on our server from the place, date, time and any words you wrote, because a sheet carrying them is the thing being made. Place names and coordinates from GeoNames (geonames.org), CC BY 4.0.
What this is
The actual moment
Phase, illumination, distance and altitude are computed for the clock time you choose in the place's own civil time, through the IANA time zone history, not read off a date table. A birth moon computed from the date alone can land in the wrong phase band across time zones, because one calendar date spans 26 hours of clocks; this one is computed for the moment you name.
The right way up
South of the equator the Moon is rotated 180 degrees, because that is how it really differs between hemispheres, and the render says so. The photograph is never mirrored; waxing and waning move the shadow, as they do in the sky.
Shows its work
Moonrise and moonset for that calendar day, the traditional full moon name where one applies, any lunar eclipse that darkened it, and the conventions stated in plain type. If you remember the night, you can check the sheet against your memory before paying.
The two editions
- The print-resolution US Letter keepsake: the Moon over your place on your night, above the typeset record, no watermark.
- The real photograph: NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter image, shaded to the computed phase, never clip art.
- The record: illumination, age, distance, with the 360,000 km supermoon threshold stated where one applies, moonrise and moonset, the folklore name where one applies, any eclipse that night.
- The conventions, on the sheet: the exact instant, the time zone rule, the hemisphere rule, the calendar caveat for old dates.
- A year of adjustments: the night is fixed; the place and clock time can change at regeneration, free.
- Everything in the $9 sheet, plus:
- Your occasion, typeset large at the top of the sheet: the night you were born, the night we married, the night we met, the night it all began, in loving memory, or your own words alone.
- Your dedication line, in your words, set in its own type. It prints in Latin letters; emoji and other scripts do not survive print typesetting and are removed.
- Four typeset themes: Midnight, Blush, Lavender and Ink. The type and paper change; the Moon never does.
- Four print masters: 8×10, 11×14 and A4 drop straight into store-bought frames on either side of the Atlantic; US Letter is there for printing at home or at a copy counter.
The on-page render, the share cards in all three formats and the numbers stay free either way; every computed value is public domain (CC0). The method behind all of it is public at methodology, and the same engine drives the Moon Phase Calendar and the 2027 moon calendar.
Some nights worth looking up
Four examples; every number on them is computed the moment the page opens, by the same engine.
Questions a careful buyer asks
What exactly do I get for $9?
One print-resolution keepsake sheet (US Letter portrait PDF), computed for the night, time and place you picked: the real NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photograph of the Moon shaded to the exact computed phase, above a typeset record of the illumination, the Moon's age and distance, that night's moonrise and moonset, the traditional full moon name where one applies, any lunar eclipse that darkened it, and every computation convention stated in plain type on the sheet itself. The lunar disc is a 1,088-pixel NASA image: about 286 dots per inch at 8×10, 268 at A4, 261 on US Letter and 204 at 11×14, where the disc is largest at 5.3 inches. The type is vector and stays sharp at every size. The $19 Occasion Edition adds your occasion heading, a dedication line in your words (Latin letters; emoji and other scripts are removed at typesetting), four themes, and print masters in four sizes: US Letter, 8×10, 11×14 and A4. Both editions also come as an 8×10 JPEG at 300 dots per inch, drawn in your browser from the same night, because drugstore and supermarket photo counters print from images and refuse a PDF. The sheet is yours to print, at home or at any print shop; the lunar photograph is NASA's, in the public domain, and the sheet says so. Delivered the moment payment confirms; downloads and adjustments work for a full year.
How do I know the Moon is right?
Check it before paying: the render on this page is computed in your own browser by the same open-source engine as the paid sheet, and the method and the engine's accuracy against JPL Horizons are public at methodology. A phase computed from a date alone, with no time, no place and no hemisphere handling, can land in the wrong phase band across time zones, and up to 12 percentage points of illumination away from the moment you mean; this sheet computes the actual moment at the actual place, states its conventions on the artifact, and survives being checked against your own memory of the night.
Which moment of the night does it show?
The clock time you choose, in the place's own civil time; if you leave the time alone it uses 22:00, a stated evening convention. Local time follows the IANA time zone history for the place, so historical dates resolve to what clocks there actually read, falling back to local mean time before standard time was adopted. On a night when daylight saving ends the earlier of the two identical readings is used, and a spring-forward reading that never existed shifts to the first following minute; the sheet says so whenever either rule fires.
What about the Southern Hemisphere?
The view is rotated 180 degrees whenever the place you pick is south of the equator, because that is really how the Moon differs between hemispheres, and the convention is stated on the render and on the sheet. A render that skips this rotation is upside down from Melbourne.
What about dates before 1752?
Dates are the modern (Gregorian) civil calendar throughout, and the engine is accurate across the whole 1700 to 2200 window. A date recorded before September 1752 in Britain or its colonies is Julian and sits about eleven days earlier than the same-named Gregorian date; the sheet carries that caveat whenever it applies, so a christening date copied from an old parish register can be interpreted knowingly.
Do I need an account?
No, and there isn't one to create. After paying you land on a page holding your sheet, and that page's address is your private link back: bookmark it and you can download again for a full year. The night you bought is fixed, because it is the thing you bought, but the place and clock time can be adjusted when you regenerate, so a typo or a second copy for the other side of the family costs nothing. If you lose the link, email info@cyclecalcs.com from the address you paid with and we will send it back.
Payment is handled by Stripe; your card details never reach this site. Full refund within 30 days, no reason needed. See the Terms of Sale for this sheet.