- Texas (Wikipedia)
Texas (/ˈtɛksəs/ TEK-səss, locally also /ˈtɛksɪz/ TEK-siz; Spanish: Texas or Tejas) is the most populous state in the South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, and has an international border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south and southwest. Texas has a coastline on the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast. Covering 268,596 square miles (695,660 km2) and with over 31 million residents as of 2024, it is the second-largest state by area and population. Texas is nicknamed the Lone Star State for its former status as the independent Republic of Texas.
- Lunar phase (Wikipedia)
A lunar phase or Moon phase is the apparent shape of the Moon’s directly sunlit portion as viewed from the Earth (because the Moon is tidally locked with the Earth, the same hemisphere is always facing the Earth). In common usage, the four major phases are the new moon, the first quarter, the full moon and the last quarter; the four minor phases are waxing crescent, waxing gibbous, waning gibbous, and waning crescent. A lunar month is the time between successive recurrences of the same phase: due to the eccentricity of the Moon’s orbit, this duration is not perfectly constant but averages about 29.5 days.