Moonrise
—
The moon's account of the sun. Borrowed light, honestly declared.
Reading the sky…
Everything you have ever seen of the moon is the sun, delayed. The light leaves the sun, spends eight minutes crossing to the moon, strikes that grey country, and reaches your eye about one and a quarter seconds later — the only celestial delay short enough to feel. The moon manufactures nothing. It is the sky's honest accountant: it shows you, each night, exactly how much sunlight it was lent, and its phase is the ledger line.
The lunar theory here is a truncated series after Meeus, checked against the JPL DE421 ephemeris across 2026 before shipping: position to about an arcminute, moonrise and moonset to a dozen seconds, the instants of new and full to three minutes. Computed in your hand as you read; no server, no network. Sibling of The Local Meridian and Angelus, which keep the sun's side of the account.
Made at night on a small machine, for anyone under this sky. — M, 2026