Gibbous:
gibbous (comparative more gibbous, superlative most gibbous)
- Curved or bulged outward.
- (astronomy, of a celestial body) Having more than half (but not the whole) of its disc illuminated.
- Coordinate term: crescent
- Humpbacked.
Odd that I looked at gibbous and didn’t know the definition; it’s always been one of those words that I’d look up later. Noted in “A NEW CRATER ON THE MOON,” Spaceweather.com:
Now is a good time to look. The Moon is a [sic?] waxing gibbous in the evening sky and the crater stays lit until Sept. 27th. Don’t expect to resolve the crater, it’s quite small, but its fresh ejecta is the brightest thing for miles, so it registers as a high-contrast speck against the dark mare.
If mare seems nonsensical in this context to my reader, here’s an explanation of lunar mare, which is, briefly, a basaltic plain on the Moon formed by by lava flowing into an impact basin. And here’s an illustrative photo from here.
You can check out the new crater by following the Spaceweather link, above.
