But the moon is always traveling in the same direction, and the earth always rotates in one direction. So, certain alignments and relative movements will be impossible.
Yeah but the moon starts traveling in front of the sun and then passes the sun so depending on the timing it could be an upside down devil horns or a right side up
Whether it's horns or an arch depends on timing. However, due to the consistency of the relative motions in play, horns on a sunrise will always get thicker as the moon moves past the sun. On the other side then, during sunset, an arch would similarly be getting thicker while the sun goes down and the moon moves past it.
What you can't have, for one example, is horns that get thinner during sunrise.
I think it looks thicker as it rises because the sun is getting brighter and therefore more overexposed. During an eclipse, the moon takes about 5 hours to traverse the full diameter of the sun. During a sunrise, the sun takes about 5 minutes to go from partially visible to fully above the horizon. So any actual change in thickness is negligible.
Just to add clarity, the both rotate the same direction and revolve generally the same, but as far as I can remember, the moon has the second most eccentric orbit of a major body in the solar system. Its path relative to the earth moves up and down the sky. Most other bodies are locked in the ecliptic plane from the solar systems formulation. The moon has a troubled past that sent in a weird way. This kind of alignment id guess is fairly rare. Tilted where the horns are pointed left or right would be a lot more common. Nature is awesome.
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u/jacob_ewing 17h ago
I (not an expert in any related field) imagine it could go either way as the moon's position isn't tied to the sun's.