New CGI: Moon Phases

2025-09-16 | #Moon #cgi | @Acidus

I added a new CGI to my capsule: Moon Phases

I have wanted to do something like this for a while:

• It's fun to know when the next Full Moon is, and I deeply enjoy a cold fall evening with a big, bright Moon.
• Unlike weather or sunrise/sunset times, no external API is needed. The phases of the Moon are just pure math, from a fixed reference point.
• There are emojis for each phase of the Moon, so this lends itself to a text-first medium like Gemini.

Also, Moon Phases are an example of the type of project I love: something that seems really straightforward ("Display the current phase of the Moon") but can be surprisingly more nuanced. For example:

• When is the next full Moon?
• Will it be a super Moon?
• How bright is the Moon right now? How can I represent this visually?
• Where are we in the lunar cycle?

Monochrome Emojis and Dark mode

Because of life and family, when I'm working on Gemini things, it tends to be late at night. And while working on this project, I was kind of going a little insane. Here is why:

Here is the emoji for a New Moon: 🌑 The New Moon phase is when the Moon is entirely dark and not visible.

Here is the emoji for a Full Moon: 🌕 The Full Moon phase is when the entire Moon is bright and visible.

If you are using a Gemini browser that uses monochrome emojis (like Lagrange), and you are in dark mode (as I always was, because it was late at night), the emojis above will appear backwards! The New Moon is a solid white space, while the Full Moon is a dark space with a white outline. This was.... incredibly confusing.

@skyjake, please consider this my semi-annual plea to please allow color emojis in Lagrange 😄💙