Upside down moon - 2015

Another upside down moon last night, seen from our sitting room window in Greece. I immediately went outside on the terrace and started taking photographs.

This is the fourth time I have seen this phenomenon and it's always in February. What was different this time is that above the moon was Venus, very bright too. 

I find the moon fascinating and seeing this phenomenon is always exciting. One of my posts on this has reached 13,800 views and you can see from the comments that people find this fascinating too - you can see this post here

This is the scientific explanation:

An upside down moon is a result of the moon's orbit around the earth, and the earth's orbit around the sun. And exactly when you see the moon in the shape of a U (lit on the bottom) rather than a backward C depends on what latitude you are at.

We see the moon in the night sky because it is reflecting light from the sun. So the lit part of the moon always points towards the sun. As the earth travels around the sun, the tilt of the earth on its axis sometimes points the northern hemisphere towards the sun and sometimes points the southern hemisphere towards the sun. But this also changes the apparent path of the moon across the night sky when you are on earth looking out at it. Sometimes it travels at an angle towards the horizon and sometimes it travels straight down toward the horizon. When the crescent moon travels straight down the horizon, you will get the U shaped moon. This can happen once or twice a year, depending on the latitude of your location.

I was out on the terrace looking at the moon and Venus for about 10 minutes. During that time the moon had travelled quite a distance towards the horizon - in another 10 minutes it had disappeared behind the buildings.