A year of nights · 18 × 12 to 60 × 40 in
A year of your town's Moon.
Every night's disc is turned the way the Moon stood in your sky at nine in the evening, and every phase is timed to the minute in your town's own clock. We print the sheet.
Every phase instant on this sheet is within 1 minute of NASA's catalog.
Each disc is the Moon at 21:00 by the town's clock. A small ring under a disc means the Moon was below the horizon at that hour.
The studio
The Sky, then the Colour
The method
How Each Disc Is Drawn
- 21:00
The town's clock
Nine in the evening by the town's time zone, daylight saving and all, turned into Universal Time from the zone database in your browser.
- k, χ
Where the Moon stood
The Moon's and the Sun's positions at that instant give the lit fraction of the disc and the direction its bright side faces.
- χ − q
Turned to the horizon
The parallactic angle for the town's latitude turns each disc from north-up to the way it stood in that sky. Sydney's crescents lean the other way from London's.
- ± 1 min
The phases, timed
New moon, first quarter, full moon and last quarter, set in the town's clock to the minute and printed in the margin beside their month.
Two things the sheet can't do. Every disc is drawn for 21:00, whether or not the Moon was up; on many nights it was below the horizon, and those discs carry a small open ring beneath them. And for a year and town the time-zone database doesn't reach, such as a town that changed its clocks before the database began, the sheet keeps the database's best offset, which can differ from what that town's clocks read.
Lunar and solar positions after Jean Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms (2nd ed., 1998), as implemented in Painted Skies. Phase instants checked against the NASA GSFC Moon phase catalog (Fred Espenak). Towns and their zones from the IANA time zone database, release 2026e. The method and its sources are listed in sources.json.
The same habit runs through the family. Painted Shores draws a year of tides at your shore, and Painted Heavens prints one night's sky. Besselian solves every eclipse from 2001 to 2100 for your own place and prints its difference from NASA beside each answer.
The receipt
Checked Against NASA's Catalog
Six comparisons run before every build of this site, and a build that misses one doesn't ship. Each allowance was written down before its first comparison ran, and none has been loosened.
| What is checked | Against | Worst measured | Allowed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phase instants | 9,994 new moons, quarters and full moons, 1899 to 2100, against the NASA GSFC Moon phase catalog (Fred Espenak), which gives each to the minute | 31 s, the full moon of 30 Jan 2067; mean 15 s | 3 minutes |
| Lit fraction of the disc | Six nights from 1901 to 2099, against JPL Horizons and Meeus's worked example 48.a | 0.00003 | 0.005 |
| Direction of the bright side | Three of those nights, against the same two sources | 0.044° | 0.5° |
| The turn to the town's horizon | Sydney, Honolulu, Quito and London, against angles worked separately from JPL Horizons positions | 0.0011° | 0.1° |
| The town's clock | Eight instants across daylight-saving changes in both hemispheres, against Python's copy of the zone database | 0 min | the exact minute |
| The hemisphere turn | Stockholm and Cape Town on the full moon of 3 Jan 2026, each as the Moon crossed its meridian: their bright sides 179.95° apart | 0.05° from 180° | 10° |
The phase comparison uses NASA's catalog as retrieved on 2026-10-10, and the page prints the figures from the latest run.
Privacy, by construction
What Leaves Your Browser
The sheet is computed in this tab, so nothing about it is sent anywhere until you order.
| What | Where it is | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Your position | Asked for only when you press Use My Location, and used in this tab to find the nearest town on the list | Dropped at once. Never sent, never stored. |
| The town, its coordinates and zone, the name on the sheet, the year and colours | In the page address; sent to our server only when you order, to draw the print file | For as long as the print file is kept, as the privacy notice says. |
| Name, email and address | Stripe at checkout, and the printer that makes it | As the privacy notice says. No cookies, no analytics. |
To scale
On Four Walls
The sheet you set, to scale over an 84 in sofa. It redraws as you choose.