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On the equator the moon flips upside-down as it travels
From minutephysics, Common Moon Mistakes.
posted by JHarris on Dec 04, 2025 at 6:24 AM
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don't get me started about cartoon lobsters
posted by glonous keming at 6:39 AM
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Ugh, the side rods on the drivers in a drawing of a steam engine.
posted by Reverend John at 6:51 AM
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Or any amateur (or, dear god, AI) trying to draw a tolerably-realistic film projector from memory.
posted by AzraelBrown at 7:02 AM
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Good timing to post this when there's a full moon.
posted by vacapinta at 7:12 AM
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Or people trying to draw a bicycle from memory.
posted by bitslayer at 7:18 AM
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Some of these I disagree with. Exaggerating the curvature of the arc of a crescent moon is not artists and animators not knowing what the moon looks like, it's them exaggerating features because that's what cartoons do. You might as well say it's a mistake that cartoons have such big eyes, how can they make that mistake when they can look at real humans and ducks whenever they want!
The stuff about position and direction and time of day and stuff through, probably yeah that's more subtle and easier to not notice and be aware of.
posted by aubilenon at 7:43 AM
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For the entrance exam for my Architecture degree, I had to draw a bicycle, the Coca-Cola logo, and a shoe seen from the inside.
I got in, but the exam didn't move my initial position up or down, so i guess I was meh.
posted by signal at 7:55 AM
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Cartoon brains...
posted by Phanx at 8:08 AM
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I appreciated when this was subverted in the sleeper classic Treasure Planet, where the moon in the sky is an exaggerated crescent and you can see stars through the center of it, but then it starts zooming in and it turns out it's actually a crescent-shaped spaceport in the sky.
posted by AzraelBrown at 8:12 AM
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At least he didn't try to drop some ridiculous nonsense like, "the moon's not actually made out of cheese."
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 9:06 AM
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I spent the first 30 years of my life in the northern US and had a legitimate panic attack when I moved to the South, the first time I noticed the crescent moon was at a different angle from what I was used to. It just looked wrong.
posted by Daily Alice at 9:23 AM
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ut the moon wasn't at a different angle; you were!
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:29 AM
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The most common mistake I see is when the tips of a crescent moon point toward a visible sun. He indicates this but not explicitly.
posted by TDIpod at 10:28 AM
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The thing about the bicycles reminds me of the intro to Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.
It's an illustration of how most people, most of the time, don't really see what they're looking at. What they see is already processed into symbols for the thing being looked at, before it reaches awareness.
Learning to actually see what is there, without turning it into symbols, will not make you a competent artist. But it's worthwhile.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 10:30 AM
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xaggerating the curvature of the arc of a crescent moon is not artists and animators not knowing what the moon looks like, it's them exaggerating features because that's what cartoons do.
Yes, this is recognized, and complaining about it seems like a very Neil deGrasse Tyson thing to do.
But on the other hand, we're surrounded by examples of people making dumb mistakes because they take what popular culture presents to them uncritically as truth.
People sometimes get obsessively pedantic because others obviously don't get exposed to enough obsessive pedantry. I think no perfect line can be drawn.
posted by JHarris at 10:31 AM
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> Exaggerating the curvature of the arc of a crescent moon is not artists and animators not knowing what the moon looks like, it's them exaggerating features because that's what cartoons do
Saying that artists and animators exaggerate the arc of the crescent moon isn't saying that they don't know what the moon looks like, it's just pointing out the error for dramatic effect as a useful hook for explaining an interesting fact because that's what science communicators do :P
posted by merlynkline at 10:53 AM
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If you measure the diameter of Luna, it is slightly less than measuring the west coast of Australia to the east coast. But if you walk from the "left" most spot you can see on Luna from Earth to its antipode, it is further than walking from the west to the east coast of Australia, and nobody measures Australia using the "bore through the planet" distance.
So who is really wider?
posted by NotAYakk at 10:54 AM
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Celestial navigation is one of my hobbies so I spend time thinking about where things are in the sky. Going to the southern hemisphere really messed with me -- the sun rises and sets in the wrong direction, shadows point south, and sun-dials run backwards. I would look at walking directions and promptly turn the wrong way since everything was rotated from what my intuition said.
At night I also always confusing the Magellanic clouds for actual clouds. They really do look like clouds hanging in the sky, except they rotate with the stars.
Crossing the equator and seeing a horizontal crescent moon was awe inspiring. The sunset looks totally sci-fi with a thin sliver chasing it straight to the horizon.
posted by autopilot at 10:56 AM
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In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib twice in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of magic xylophone or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
posted by star gentle uterus at 11:00 AM
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I thought this was the most common mistakes made by moons. Like getting tidally locked with a planet when you barely know each other. Or judging other moons by their albedo. Or comparing yourself with other rotating bodies and feeling ashamed that you're not moving elliptically enough. Or "working on the three body problem" when you and/or your planet aren't really ready for it.
posted by PlusDistance at 11:11 AM
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My extemporaneous No-Prize attempt to justify the Lion King example:
This is a solar eclipse, and Rafiki (in his role as mystical advisor to the monarchy) correctly interprets it as a celestial omen.
posted by unregistered_animagus at 11:19 AM
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complaining about it seems like a very Neil deGrasse Tyson thing to do
I didn't really get a Cinema Sins/Neil Degrasse Tyson-y "Well, actually..." type vibe from this video. Seems more of an "I'm going to explain some simple aspects of an everyday phenomenon that you've probably never even thought about or else observed hundreds of times but didn't ever realize that you were observing" type of deal. I enjoyed it.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:21 AM
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I have lived for multiple years each as close to the equator as 13° and as close to a pole as 47°. I've traveled for multiple days as close to the equator as 3° and as close to a pole as 59°.
I have always been vaguely aware that the angle of the lit portion of the moon varies over the course of the year. I had never once noticed that its angle was different based on latitude.
posted by solotoro at 11:42 AM
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Yeah, this was a good video, and demerits for everyone who complains about the pedantry. I don't mind that the Lion King shows the moon in a cartoony way, because it is a cartoon full of cartoonishness. But it is interesting to point out how unrealistic it is and think about why pretty much nobody notices or cares.
I found it striking when I was probably over 40 years old and noticed a crescent moon high in the midday sky, and for the first time I thought about how easy it is to see that the sun was lighting up one side of the moon because the sun and the moon appear to be right next to each other. I realized that normally I only notice the crescent moon right after sunset. It's far less likely that you look at a crescent moon at midday because it's faint, it's overwhelmed by the bright sun, and you spend most of your time instinctively not looking at or even near the sun. When you see a moon in the daylight it's more likely to be a half-moon and it's position in relation to the sun is less striking.
The most common mistake I see is when the tips of a crescent moon point toward a visible sun. He indicates this but not explicitly
Eh. His "Mistake #3" is that the bright side should face the sun, and that's the same as saying the tips of the crescent point away from the sun.
My pendantry: saying that the full moon rises at the same time as the sun sets is only roughly true on the equinox. The higher your latitude and the closer you are to a solstice, the farther this statement gets from the truth. If you are at such a latitude that daylight is 4 hours long, then the full moon should be visible for about 4 hours(*)(**), but there will be an 8-hour gap in between when you see sun and moon.
(*) and rarely exact since their orbits are offset.
(**) and yeah, yeah, they have diameters which take time to cross the horizon
posted by polecat at 2:34 PM
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