When and why do we see the "devil" Moon?

Event Date: March 12th

Time: 7:30 PM

Brief

   A few years ago, the late February-early March waxing crescent Moons had great apparitions during their first 48 hours.  Our satellite's orbit was just past ascending node west of it, and it moved north quickly.  Now, as shown in the image below, the Moon's orbit has it coming fast towards descending node.  Even though our satellite still moves north quickly, the rate of that decreases faster than it did at these same longitudes back in between 2008-'10.  Notice how the orbit's angle with the ecliptic is smaller by a small amount.  Regardless, the sliver of Moon that we will see this evening will be impressive.

Detailed

   The second image that I will show, is that of the Moon seemingly "sitting" on its western limb, looking like a small smiley mouth.  Take a look to see what I mean.  

click on images to enlarge: courtesy of Starry Night Pro Plus, version 6.4.3, by Simulation Curriculum Corp

Others have dubbed this appearance as the "horns" or even more interestingly enough, the devil horns.  I have yet to find a link for the latter, although one for the former is here.  The terminator creates this image of two pointy (sharp) horns sticking up.  This is more properly known as the cusp.  This is the case because--as we see them--the Sun is shining at the Moon from almost directly below the horizon.  There are other times when the Sun shines on the Moon's side instead of its front, and it appears like a backwards "C" shape.  There are also rare times--when its azimuth is a little closer to north than the Sun--that its smile shape is tilted a little to the right from our perspective.  This happened a few times over the course of 2011-2012, and it is as if we are viewing the waxing crescent from the low-mid southern latitudes in August and September.

In short, the Moon's apparent "tilt" depends mainly on the geometry of the sky and a few times, where it is in ecliptic latitude.