Many ancient legends talk of the Sun chasing the Moon. In modern times, many amateur scientists and even some professional ones dismiss this ancient view.

And ironically, these modern purists are more than a century out of date. 

Every day, moonrise is about fifty minutes later than it was the previous day.  [1] Sunrise, on the other hand, is at about the same time. Sunrise varies a few minutes with the seasons, back and forth, but never so drastically as moonrise does on a daily basis. 

This led to the ancients concluding that the Sun was chasing the Moon through the sky. And if you believe as they did that the Earth is the centre of the Universe, that makes perfect sense.

The Sun catches and overtakes the Moon every New Moon. And that is the other notable thing about the Moon of course. It has phases. When the Sun and Moon are close together in the sky, very little of the Moon can be seen. As the Sun leaves the moon behind, a crescent becomes visible, called a New Moon, with the larger radius curve towards the Sun, a bit like a stylised arrowhead.  Some days later half of the Moon, called the first quarter, is visible, with the rounded side facing the Sun. And then it slowly builds to a full moon, rising at about sunset and setting at about dawn, and then back through another half moon pointing the opposite way in the sky but again towards the Sun as the Sun catches it again.

And over again. The ancients watched this relatively predictable cycle in the heavens and decided that there was a perfection in the heavens that the weather on Earth did not possess, and that the Heavens were the place of the Gods. Astronomy became one of the earliest sciences.

We now know that this cycle is the result of two cycles. The Earth rotates on its axis, causing the sunrise and sunset. And the moon revolves around the Earth, but far more slowly, causing the time of moonrise and moonset to continually shift.

That's the modern view. Or most of it. It's called the Heliocentric Universe. And for some purposes it's more accurate than the Geocentric one in which everything is centred on the Earth.

But there is a newer and far better and more generally accurate picture of the Universe. It's called Relativity. You use whatever frame of reference makes the sums easiest. And for some purposes, thinking of the Sun as chasing the Moon is the easiest way by far to get it right.

So the ancients are in this sense vindicated.