Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 97% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 16 days old.
The moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It is visible to the southwest and it is high in the sky after midnight.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠5° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 5 March 2015 at 18:06.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2015 after 28 days on 4 April 2015 at 12:06.
There is medium ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at very acute angle, so their combined tidal force is moderate.
Lunar disc appears visually 8.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1776" and ∠1933".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 187 of Meeus index or 1140 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 49 minutes and it is 28 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
The length of the current synodic month is 2 hours and 55 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 14 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠354.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠9.9°.
2 days since point of apogee on 5 March 2015 at 07:35 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 19 March 2015 at 19:38 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 403 538 km (250 747 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 12 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 584 km (222 192 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♎ Libra at 21:04 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next descending node later on 21 March 2015 at 02:19 in ♈ Aries.
8 days since the last northern standstill on 27 February 2015 at 07:19 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.335° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.262° at the point of next southern standstill on 14 March 2015 at 01:39 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 21:04 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 12 days on 20 March 2015 at 09:36 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is going to be in a New Moon geocentric conjunction with the Sun and thus forming the next Sun-Moon-Earth 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
