It's crazy, really, to think we can see the shape and contour of a something that's nearly 240,000 miles away. The moon can feel like a mirage—or as Yingjie Bei puts it: "I'm not sure if it's really there or if it's an illusion in my brain."

Bei is a student at New York University's ITP program where he studies interaction design. For a recent project, he and fellow student Yifan Hu created a gizmo that makes the mystery of the moon a little more tangible. Using knobs, you can input any date and see what the moon phase would look like on that particular night from the perspective of the northern hemisphere.