For the next couple of evenings the moon will be perfectly placed in the evening sky. This is a great time to become familiar with some of the moon?s most interesting features.

First of all, you may notice that the moon looks a bit peculiar tonight. For observers in the Northern Hemisphere, the lit part of the moon will be at the bottom, rather than at the side where you might expect to see it. There is nothing unusual about this: it?s simply the result f the position of the moon relative to the sun. The sun is below the horizon and almost directly below the moon, from our point of view, so the spherical shape of the moon appears to be lit from below.

The moon is just shy of first quarter, six days past new moon. Features along the moon?s terminator, the dividing line between lunar daylight and shadow, are shown in high relief by the low angle of sunlight.

The first things to notice, visible even to the naked eye, are the three dark gray plains, called ?maria? (Latin for ?seas?) on the moon. These are the Mare Serenitatis (Sea of Serenity), Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility), and Mare Fecunditatis (Sea of Fecundity). These rather fanciful names date from the 17^th century, when these barren airless plains were still thought to be seas of liquid water.

The Mare Tranquillitatis is best known as the landing place of the Apollo 11, the first manned spaceship to reach the moon on 1969 July 20. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin explored the area around their landing spot while their colleague Michael Collins remained in orbit above.

All three men are commemorated by three small craters close to their landing spot. These and the other craters named for the Apollo astronauts are the only craters on the moon named after living persons. It takes a good map and a moderately large telescope to spot these three tiny craters, all less than 3 miles (5 km) in diameter.

Even the smallest telescope will reveal hundreds of large craters on the moon. At this time of the month, one of the largest is Posidonius, a huge ring plain on the north ?shore? of the Mare Serenitatis. Named after a Greek astronomer who lived about 100 BC, it is 59 miles (95 km) in diameter and has a floor filled with smaller craters, mountain ridges, and rilles (collapsed lava tubes).

At the south end of the Mare Tranquillitatis is a set of three overlapping craters: Theophilus, Cyrillus, and Catharina. All three are named after people associated with the Egyptian city of Alexandria.

Theophilus and Cyrillus were successive bishops of Alexandria, and Catharina was Saint Catherine of Alexandria, the patron saint of Christian philosophers. All three craters are 60 miles (100 km) in diameter and show a variety of different characteristics in a telescope. By studying their overlapping walls, it?s possible to reconstruct the history of this region.

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This article was provided to SPACE.com by Starry Night Education, the leader in space science curriculum solutions.