Explanation: This is a gibbous Moon. More Earthlings are familiar with a full moon, when the entire face of Luna is lit by the Sun, and a crescent moon, when only a sliver of the Moon’s face is lit. When more than half of the Moon is illuminated, though, but still short of full illumination, the phase is called gibbous. Rarely seen in television and movies, gibbous moons are quite common in the actual night sky. The featured image was taken in Jämtland, Sweden near the end of 2018 October. That gibbous moon turned, in a few days, into a crescent moon, and then a new moon, then back to a crescent, and a few days past that, back to gibbous. Setting up to capture a picturesque gibbous moonscape, the photographer was quite surprised to find an airplane, surely well in the foreground, appearing to fly past it.

Today NASA is running my Lunar flyby photo as APOD - @astronomypicturesdaily This is my 25th APOD and it’s always such an honor to get published by NASA. The photo was taken back in October 2018 during a snow storm, as I was about to take the photo I could see the airplane coming in from the left and took a couple of shots just in case, didn’t think much of it since my main goal was to get the moon while it was setting. Later it turned out this shot was my favorite among the ones I took.