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Do you remember the first time you saw the moon? Probably you were with your mom, and
she pointed at the sky as she repeated the word moon to you.
The sublime experience you live when watching the moon is due, among other things, to its
constant change. The increase and decrease of the luminous side of the moon marks the
passage of time and influence everything around with its cycles. This transformation process
is known as the moon phases. If you film every night one minute of the
moon, you may see it go through its different phases smoothly until disappearing.
It's very easy! You will only need a camera you can use every night for one month and
a computer to do your video Go to the nearest library and tell the librarian about your
project, she will help you borrow a camera for the next 28 nights.
Start by choosing an outdoor location from which you will record the moon every night.
Try to get always the same image: if the moon is in the center, try to keep it always in
the same place and same size. To do this, you may set the zoom always in the same point,
or you may copy the moon size on a piece of paper over the screen, and use always that
piece of paper to mark the circumference in the exact size.
Next, make sure to go every night to the same place at the same time, setting your image
in the same way. Every day make a 1-minute recording.
Once the recording is finished, go to your computer as soon as possible and save the
file, naming it with that day's date. As you download your material daily, you may review
it and make a backup copy. Then you will be saving several files with the different phases
of the moon. When the moon has returned to the first phase
in which you began your recording, which happens after 28 days of having started, you will
have concluded your recording process. Now you may edit your video. To do that, take
the files you recorded to the Movie Maker. You can make a short animated video by cutting
the duration of the images, leaving only 1 second from every minute you recorded every
day. If you recorded 28 days, you will have a 28-second video which will summarize in
motion all phases of the moon. Display your video through social networks
and watch the reactions of people. They will be pleased to see this phenomenon in motion.
Inspire your friends to document nature's phenomena, or to make their own versions of
the lunar phases. After all, there's nothing more romantic that
the moon charms.