Ever wonder when the next supermoon or lunar eclipse will be taking place? Whether you’re an astrophotographer or simply an astronomy lover, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has made it easy to discover the phases of the moon with a clever DIY project. Their Moon Phases Calendar and Calculator is a fun project that only requires a printer, scissors, a hole punch, some tape, and a brass fastener to complete.
Once assembled, you just spin the wheel to any given date in 2018 and it will show the phase of the moon—in the Northern Hemisphere. And it gets even better. You can use the handy calculator to see what time of day (in the Pacific Time Zone) a particular moon phase is occurring depending on the direction you are facing, allowing you to plan your moon watching perfectly.
You can download the printable worksheet from NASA and get started, following the steps below. And if you want to learn more about the moon, check out NASA’s page dedicated to the Moon and the people who have landed on it.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
