The right moon gift depends on what they love about it. Some people love the object: the grey seas, the bright highlands, the craters along the edge of the shadow. Some love the cycle, the way it thins and fills again every month. Others have one night in mind, and the Moon is how they remember it. Each of those points to a different piece, and they don't overlap much.
The Moon on one date
A personalised moon phase print shows how much of the Moon was lit on a date you choose: a birthday, a wedding day, the day a child was born. You add the date and a title, see it in a free preview, and pay only if it looks right. It costs £22.99 at A4 or £34.99 at A3, as a poster, with UK delivery included.
The phase is calculated for 12:00 UTC on that date and drawn over a NASA map of the lunar surface, north up. It marks the day, not the view from one window at one hour. On 20 July 1969, for example, the Moon was a waxing crescent, about 30% lit and bright on the right as seen from Britain. That was planned: each Apollo landing was timed for soon after local sunrise at the landing site, with the Sun only 5 to 14 degrees up, so long shadows made the ground easier to read (American Museum of Natural History, Apollo landings and lunar phases).
If the place and the time of night matter as well, a personalised star map charts the whole sky for that date, place and minute instead.
Moon gifts for someone who follows the phases
Lunar Phases sets the eight phases in gold linework on a near-black ground, in the order a UK observer sees them: a waxing Moon lit on the right, a waning one on the left. It's the general cycle, not one month or one date. The A4 poster is £17.99 and the A3 £28.99; framed at A3, in black or natural wood, it is £69. The same artwork comes on a mug at £16.99.
Its long, narrow shape works above a bed or along a hallway. For a pair, hang it beside Watercolour Moon at the same size.
For someone who loves the full Moon
Watercolour Moon paints the full Moon in loose grey and silver wash, darkest in the maria. Those patches are plains of dark volcanic rock that early astronomers took for seas; the brighter ground around them is older, higher and more heavily cratered. On the night of a full Moon the Sun sits behind us and casts almost no shadow on the surface, so it looks flat and bright. A watercolour suits that night because it is about tone, not relief.
On canvas it starts at £51.49 for 30 x 40 cm. As an unframed poster it starts at £17.99 at A4.
Moon mugs for the kitchen or office
The Lunar Cycle Mug runs the eight phases round an 11 oz white ceramic mug, each one calculated, with the surface drawn from a NASA reference. It's £21.99. A mug suits someone whose walls you have never seen, or a colleague who stops to point out a full Moon.
For Apollo and space-travel fans
Visit the Moon borrows the look of a 1930s travel advert for a trip to the Sea of Tranquility, where Apollo 11 landed on 20 July 1969. Twelve people walked on the Moon between July 1969 and December 1972, and with no air or rain on the surface their footprints are still there. For someone who prefers the hardware, Apollo Lunar Module is an original reference schematic drawn from NASA overview drawings. Totality shows the Moon at its most dramatic, covering the Sun in a total eclipse.
Moon gifts for Christmas
Nothing is made until you order, so allow 4 to 9 working days between ordering and the parcel reaching them. Our space Christmas gifts page counts back from 23 December to the final day to order. You can send the gift straight to the recipient by entering their address at checkout. For the wider range of subjects, see space gifts; for the Moon as decoration, not a present, see moon wall art.