How can the ecliptic plane be high during the day and low at night?
Neufer provided a diagram and some others gave curt explanations, but if you are not familiar with thinking about the celestial sphere you still might not understand. Imagine the earth's equator and poles projected into sky. These will be the celestial equator and poles.
If you look at Neufer's diagram of the tilt of the ecliptic relative to the equator, the part of the ecliptic that crosses an imaginary north-south line at your location (also called the local meridian) will have a different position relative to the celestial equator depending where on Earth you are. At the summer solstice, the arrow marked "oribt direction" in Neufers image is actually the direction towards the sun. The sun is on the ecliptic, by definition, so at the summer solistice, when you are on the part of the Earth where the sun is crossing the local meridian, the sun is as high as it gets above the celestial equator (23.5 degrees).
The full moon will be directly opposite the sun ( on the ecliptic +/- about 5 degrees due to the tilt of the moons orbit relative to the earth's and celestial equator) so, when the full Moon crosses your local meridian (midnight) it and the ecliptic are as low as they get
below the celestial equator. The net effect of all this is at the summer solistice, when the sun crosses the meridian it will be (90-your local latitude+23.5) degrees above the horizon. So at the north pole it will be 23.5 above the horizon all day. At a temperate latitude, say Baltimore in the US of ~40 degrees, it will be 63.5 degrees above the horizon.
Now, swing around to midnight and the full moon crossing the meridian and height of the moon above the horizon will be (90-local latitude - 23.5) degrees. You will see that at the north pole the moon will be 23.5 degrees below the horizon..it never rises. This makes sense when you think about how the full moon MUST be 180 degrees opposite the sun in the sky...yet the sun never sets that day, so the moon never rises, Just like how the sun will not rise at the north pole during the winter solstice. At our temperate latitude of Baltimore, old moon is 90-40-23.5 ...a scant 16.5 degrees above the horizon at its highest point of the night.
There is a nice
diagram here illustrating the sun's motion through the sky at different times of year. Just remember the full moon will be opposite the sun whenever it is full and you will see how it remainins lower on the horizon.
Now for my question: I did not find the defintion of "honey moon" anywhere (admittedly I gave up on google after only 10-15 minutes.) Does this refer to full moons near the solstice? Is it called that because the full moon remains visibly reddened (yellowed?) all night at temperate latitudes because, using Baltimore as our example, it will be peeking through about 3-1/3 thicknesses of atmosphere?
Lisbon Honey Moon
The ecliptic plane is indeed low at night when it is high during the day (and vice versa).
