Moonrise is the moment the moon first becomes visible above the horizon at a specific location, shifting in time and compass direction from one day to the next.
Moonrise is the moment the moon first clears the horizon, and it is when the moon is most useful to a photographer. Low to the ground it looks dramatically larger next to buildings and terrain, an illusion that fades within twenty minutes as it climbs. Its brightness is also closer to the ambient sky right after it rises, so a single exposure can hold surface detail on the moon and a recognisable foreground, which becomes impossible once it is high and the sky around it is dark.
Both the time and the compass direction of moonrise shift a lot from night to night, by up to an hour in time and several degrees in bearing, so a composition that places the moon behind a particular landmark only works on certain dates. That is why moon shots are scouted with a calculator rather than caught by luck.
A photographer wants the full moon to rise directly behind a hilltop observatory, framed from a road two kilometres away. The observatory sits at a bearing of 97 degrees from that spot. Checking a moon calculator across the days around the full moon, only one evening has the moon rising at an azimuth near 97 degrees while it is also still light enough for the dome to register against the sky.
On that night the photographer is in position forty minutes early with a 400mm lens, so the moon fills a good part of the frame behind the small distant structure. A night either side and the moon clears the horizon tens of degrees off target, rising over open sky instead of the building. The photographer also confirms moonrise falls before the sky goes fully dark, or the dome would read as a black shape against black with no separation.
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