Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 34% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 23 days old.
The moon rises after midnight to early morning and sets in the afternoon. It is visible in the early morning low to the east.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is leaving the last ∠4° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♑ Capricorn later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 1 day on 24 February 2011 at 23:26.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2011 after 21 days on 19 March 2011 at 18:10.
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 3.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1873" and ∠1938".
The Moon is 23 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 137 of Meeus index or 1090 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 18 hours and 15 minutes and it is 29 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2011. 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 5 hours and 31 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 32 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 ∠139.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠167°.
7 days since point of perigee on 19 February 2011 at 07:27 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 6 March 2011 at 07:50 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 382 735 km (237 821 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 7 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 584 km (252 640 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♐ Sagittarius at 20:19 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next descending node later on 13 March 2011 at 11:55 in ♊ Gemini.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 25 February 2011 at 22:13 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-23.985° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 14 days to face maximum declination of ∠23.825° at the point of next northern standstill on 12 March 2011 at 17:06 in ♊ Gemini.
At 20:19 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 6 days on 4 March 2011 at 20:46 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
