Moonrise and Moonset
Why moonrise moves so much day to day
The Moon rises roughly fifty minutes later each day, because it’s steadily orbiting the Earth while the Earth itself turns underneath it — by the time your horizon comes back around to where the Moon was, the Moon has already moved on.
That daily slippage is also why a day occasionally has no moonrise or no moonset at all, and why at high latitudes the Moon can stay continuously above or below the horizon for more than a full day at a time.
What the phase actually shows you
Half of the Moon is always lit by the Sun. What changes is how much of that lit half happens to be facing Earth at any given moment — nothing is casting a shadow onto it, which is the most common misunderstanding about the whole cycle.
A full moon rises around sunset and sets around sunrise because it sits opposite the Sun from where you’re standing. A new moon does the reverse, sitting up during daylight with its lit face turned fully away, which is why it’s invisible.
Questions people ask
Why is there no moonrise listed for some days?
Because moonrise shifts by roughly fifty minutes a day, a calendar day occasionally contains no rise, or no set, at all — this is normal and expected, not an error.
Is a full moon full for the whole night?
No — fullness is a single instant, not a duration. The Moon appears full for a night either side because the illuminated fraction changes very slowly near the peak.