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Out with a friend at night recently, I realized that there's one utterly basic aspect to viewing the sky that's not known by a lot of modern-age folk: EVERYTHING seems to move east to west across the sky. The Sun, the Moon, the planets, the stars... And that's because that motion is just apparent motion: it's US who are spinning eastward.

And when I pause and think about it, this neatly explains something that I've struggled to remember: the Moon appears SLOWER than the Sun because it's actually falling around the Earth in the other direction. (And that just-so-happens to be the direction that the Earth is rotating: a small evidence that the Moon came from Earth in the first place.)

One thing to try to note: when does the Moon reach it's own "noon"? When is it as high in the sky as it's gonna go?

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I've actually started a simple part of this recently with our older son, who's almost three.

We mark off the days on his calendar as part of his bedtime routine. Mainly I started doing it to practice counting, as well as learning the days of the week.

But like most calendars, it also shows the phases of the moon. So when we see the moon out, I try to point out what phase it's in and connect it to the calendar.

Both he and his younger brother get pretty excited about locating the moon in the sky, so I think we're on the right track. In another year or two, we'll start teaching them about how days and seasons and years work. And yes, I'm hoping he'll learn to tell time by the moon. ;-)

But unfortunately, the rest of the sky in my neighborhood is pretty underwhelming. Even on a clear night, I can see only about a dozen stars, and I can't make out a single constellation.

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How does one go about tracking the sun and the moon, preferably without the use of an app?

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Hmm. I’d say start simple: where’s the Sun right now? Where’s the Moon? Then come back in a few hours. Where were they, and where are they now?

Then, when you have the basic arc in your head, maybe start guessing where they’re hit the horizon. (By that tree? That building?)

Then maybe write those down, and see if they change over the next week or two.

From there, you can tap into the whole history of people who have done this (Google “gnomon” and “Stonehenge” if you’d like — h/t to Oz N. for that insight!).

But the trick is to start simple.

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