Yes, the moon is an objectX widget. It sucks up a lot of resource space (relatively speaking) but really.....what else were you doing with it anyway?
A guy by the name of Will Rose wrote these. Gotta give him props for the really nice way that they turned out. That out of the way, you can download them at WinCustomize.
Luna Vista This is a fully animated, 3D, 30-frames-per-second, 32-bit view of our moon. Not only can you enjoy watching the photo-quality moon revolve on its axis (yes, our moon DOES revolve), but this object will also tell you the current phase of the moon! The shadow keeps pace with the moon's synodic position, and you'll see it change with every night of the lunar orbital period. No quarter-half-threequarter-full approximations here. And yes, the moon is even revealed in its beautiful true color.
Phase of the Moon Here's a simple static moon phase indicator. The Moon is shown in true color from NASA imagery. The code calculates the moon's synodic position, and thus its "phase" for any date, and displays the photo-realistic shadow accordingly. It defaults to the current date and updates itself every hour. This object isn't animated, but the imagery is of the highest quality.
And just because it's really fun to have the whole world, in your...err desktop, here is the Earth too.
Earth - The blue marble This is a fully animated, 3D, 40-frames-per-second, 32-bit view of the Earth as seen from high orbit. Watch the earth rotate on its axis all day! It's better than "photo-realistic"; it's actually made from true-color imagery shot from the orbiting Terra satellite.
Beware, these are rather large, but oh so worth it from an aesthetic desktop point of view. I hope you enjoy them!