Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 5% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 27 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 ∠2° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♒ Aquarius later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 7 February 2018 at 15:54.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2018 after 16 days on 2 March 2018 at 00:51.
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 9.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1773" and ∠1943".
The Moon is 27 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 223 of Meeus index or 1176 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 18 hours and 48 minutes and it is 2 hours and 42 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2018. 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 7 hours and 3 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 59 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 ∠198.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠227.1°.
1 day since point of apogee on 11 February 2018 at 14:16 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 14 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 27 February 2018 at 14:48 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 404 384 km (251 273 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 14 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 363 938 km (226 141 mi).
12 days after ascending node on 31 January 2018 at 18:46 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 14 February 2018 at 21:11 in ♒ Aquarius.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 11 February 2018 at 23:21 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-20.026° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠20.056° at the point of next northern standstill on 25 February 2018 at 20:07 in ♋ Cancer.
12 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 2 days on 15 February 2018 at 21:05 in ♒ Aquarius 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
