New Delhi, Aug. 25 -- The moon is being handed back to the northern hemisphere, and by Friday night the handover is almost complete. The moon phase today, August 25, 2026, is a Waxing Gibbous, about 90 percent illuminated at midnight UTC and rising to 95 percent by the end of the day, thirteen days into the cycle that opened with the total solar eclipse of August 12.

Here is the thing worth measuring. On Sunday, Sydney held the moon above its horizon for six hours longer than New York did. Tonight the difference is four hours and forty minutes. On Friday, the night of the full moon, it will be fifty-nine minutes. Two cities eight thousand miles apart, on opposite sides of the equator, are converging on the same amount of moonlight inside...