The Moon Tilt Illusion

Sa？etak The moon tilt illusion is the startling discrepancy between the direction of the light beam illuminating the moon and the direction of the sun. The illusion arises because the observer erroneously expects a light ray between sun and moon to appear as a line of constant slope according to the positions of the sun and the moon in the sky. This expectation does not correspond to the reality that observation by direct vision or a camera is according to perspective projection, for which the observed slope of a straight line in three-dimensional space changes according to the direction of observation. Comparing the observed and expected directions of incoming light at the moon, we derive a quantitative expression for the magnitude of the moon tilt illusion that can be applied to all con？gurations of sun and moon in the sky