Moon Phases Explained by moonconnection.com
This graphic is helpful but just a little bit misleading. Keep in mind that the moon is tidally locked with the Earth, meaning that one side of the moon always faces us. That’s why it looks so distinctively familiar all the time. In the above picture, it’s depicted that the sun always shines on the same side of the moon. False. The illuminated side of the moon is always changing as the moon rotates around us and one same side of the moon is always facing us. The phases of the moon are just further incredibly beautiful proof of orbit, that the moon is a hunk rock hurtling through space around another hunk of rock and together they’re hurtling around a mound of helium and hydrogen—our star, the Sun.
