In article ,
Barry Schwarz wrote:

On Sun, 27 Dec 2020 09:01:18 -0600, Justin Tyme
wrote:

By cartwheel, I mean appear to rotate clockwise or counterclockwise
throughout the course of the night? Or, is is supposed to appear
stationary from a fixed point on earth?

A fair question is "Why don't you go outside and look?" My answer is
that I have and while the first few times the moon seemed to stay in
place, the last few times I have looked it had, indeed, appeared to have
rotated 45 degrees or so clockwise over the course of several hours.

Do your observations when the moon is a medium crescent (so it is
visible for several hours). It will be obvious that the horns of the
crescent appear to rotate over the hours, confirming your latter
observations. Of course it is not really rotating top to bottom, your
perspective of up and down is changing as you look from east to west.

A similar visual illusion occurs with the constellations. Sometimes
the big dipper "stands" on it bowl, other times on its handle.

The plane of the orbit rarely contains the observer. We mostly
look 'down' or 'up' at the plane of the moon's orbit, so it
rotates from our perspective, but not with respect to its own
orbital plane.

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