Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 88% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 11 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 ∠25° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 3 days on 20 February 2002 at 12:02.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2002 after 2 days on 27 February 2002 at 09:17.
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 0.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1930" and ∠1939".
The Moon is 11 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 26 of Meeus index or 979 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 18 hours and 22 minutes and it is 1 hour and 3 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2002. 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 5 hours and 38 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 25 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 ∠155.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠180.3°.
9 days since point of apogee on 14 February 2002 at 22:22 in ♓ Pisces the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 27 February 2002 at 19:47 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 371 451 km (230 809 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 3 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 356 898 km (221 766 mi).
2 days after ascending node on 22 February 2002 at 06:26 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 6 March 2002 at 16:19 in ♐ Sagittarius.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 23 February 2002 at 11:48 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠24.418° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-24.510° at the point of next southern standstill on 8 March 2002 at 01:59 in ♑ Capricorn.
2 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 2 days on 27 February 2002 at 09:17 in ♍ Virgo 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
