Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 73% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 9 days young.
The moon rises in the afternoon and sets after midnight to early morning. It is visible to the southeast in early evening and it is up for most of the night.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠21° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 2 days on 14 August 2013 at 10:56.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2013 after 4 days on 21 August 2013 at 01:45.
There is low ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at big angle, so their combined tidal force is weak.
Lunar disc appears visually 3.8% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1969" and ∠1895".
The Moon is 9 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 168 of Meeus index or 1121 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 45 minutes and it is 47 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decrease with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at perigee (∠0° or ∠360°).
The length of the current synodic month is 1 hour and 1 minute longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 2 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠216.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠249.2°.
13 days since point of apogee on 3 August 2013 at 08:53 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 19 August 2013 at 01:26 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 364 037 km (226 202 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 2 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 362 265 km (225 101 mi).
2 days after ascending node on 13 August 2013 at 16:20 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 9 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 26 August 2013 at 08:19 in ♉ Taurus.
At 12:06 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-19.906°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠19.801° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 29 August 2013 at 17:03.
2 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 4 days on 21 August 2013 at 01:45 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is going to be in a Full Moon geocentric opposition with the Sun and thus forming the next Sun-Earth-Moon syzygy alignment.
Parts of this Lunar Calendar are based on Planetary Ephemeris Data Courtesy of Fred Espenak, www.Astropixels.com
Moon phase image credit to NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, svs.gsfc.nasa.gov