Moonwatch brings the changing face of the night sky to your Display.
It works out the moon’s phase right on the Display, without needing a weather service or an account.
Three ways to see the moon
Moon gives tonight’s phase the board to itself, with its name and an optional line beneath it.
Moon over the Lake places a smaller moon above hills and water. As the moon grows brighter, so does its reflection.
The Month Ahead shows the next four main phases and their dates. If a phase happens today, it stays on the board for the rest of the day.
What the board says
Choose Artwork only to let the picture speak for itself, Phase name to show the moon’s name, or Phase + detail for a little more information.
The detail can tell you how many days remain until the next new or full moon, how much of the moon is illuminated, or when the next moonrise will happen.
Moonrise needs a town. If the moon doesn’t rise there today, the board shows its next rise on a later day.
A mood for the moon
Choose Quiet Night, Blue Hour, Lamplight, or Hedgerow for a ready-made look.
Each mood brings together the sky color, moon color, surface details, and earthshine. The colors come from your Display’s Palette, so their names may differ on another Display.
Make it your own
You can also choose the sky and moon colors yourself.
For the moon’s surface, Smooth leaves out the seas, Subtle adds a few, and Textured shows more.
These details appear only on the bright middle of the moon, so a thin crescent may not show much of them.
Earthshine lets you see the moon’s darker side. Turn it off for a darker sky. With earthshine off, a new moon shows no disk in Moon or Moon over the Lake, although The Month Ahead still shows its new moon icon.
Changing any of these appearance settings makes the look Custom. Choose one of the ready-made moods again whenever you’d like to return to it.
With the Warm Paper board theme, the sky color fills the board behind the moon.
Town and hemisphere
Choose a town to use its local date and show moonrise times.
Without a town, Moonwatch follows the Display’s time zone and uses the Northern view.
You can choose Northern or Southern yourself. The Southern view turns the moon’s picture to match the view from that hemisphere, while the words stay right where they are.
Full moon names
Some full moons have names that have been passed down through generations.
On the date of a full moon, Moon can show its traditional name, such as HUNTER’S MOON.
Names are on by default for Northern towns and off for Southern ones.
ClackSnack uses one familiar North American collection of names, described by The Old Farmer’s Almanac. These names come from different traditions, and there are many others.
A few names follow the seasons rather than a fixed month. The Harvest Moon is the full moon closest to the September equinox, and the Hunter’s Moon follows it. When two full moons occur in one calendar month, the second is commonly called a Blue Moon.