APOD: 2022 July 25

Explanation: Can you find the Moon? This usually simple task can be quite difficult. Even though the Moon is above your horizon half of the time, its phase can be anything from crescent to full. The featured image was taken in late May from Sant Martí d'Empúries, Spain, over the Mediterranean Sea in the early morning. One reason you can't find this moon is because it is very near to its new phase, when very little of the half illuminated by the Sun is visible to the Earth. Another reason is because this moon is near the horizon and so seen through a long path of Earth's atmosphere -- a path which dims the already faint crescent. Any crescent moon is only visible near the direction the Sun, and so only locatable near sunrise or sunset. The Moon runs through all of its phases in a month (moon-th), and this month the thinnest sliver of a crescent -- a new moon -- will occur in three days.

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It was worth getting out of bed early to see it. Two years ago this month, a comet rose before dawn to the delight of sky watchers in the north. One of the few comets visible to the naked eye this century was captured by the featured photographer before sunrise on July 8th. There is a video showing a comet rising over the Adriatic Sea. A time-lapse video has over 200 images. The comet was seen rising through a foreground of clouds and stars. The comet's ion and dust tails were found to originate from a nucleus that spanned about five kilometers.