I often wondered why it is that the moon appears to rise over a different point in the sky. Sometimes it would rise near my equipment barn and other times it would be well south of that (as it did this evening). Turns out there’s a simple explanation that the pencil necks in the physics realm have made difficult.
“This change in the position of moonrise throughout a given month is due to three factors. First, the Earth’s rotational axis is tilted by about 23.5 degrees relative to the plane in which it orbits around the Sun. Second, the Moon orbits the Earth in a plane that is tilted by about 5.1 degrees relative to the plane in which the Earth orbits around the Sun. Since the Moon makes one complete orbit around the Earth in 28.5 days, you will see the position of the Moon’s rise on the horizon change by twice 23.5+5.1 degrees, or about 57.2 degrees, during one orbit of the Moon around the Sun. This is pretty close to the 118-65 = 53 degrees that you measured using a compass.”
See: told ya.