Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 31% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 24 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 passing about ∠13° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 2 days on 9 March 2018 at 11:20.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2018 after 20 days on 31 March 2018 at 12:37.
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 8.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1931".
The Moon is 24 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 224 of Meeus index or 1177 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 6 minutes and it is 3 hours and 20 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 3 hours and 22 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 41 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 ∠227.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠262.6°.
Moon is at apogee at 09:13 about 11 days since last perigee on 27 February 2018 at 14:48 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 15 days until point of next perigee on 26 March 2018 at 17:17 in ♋ Cancer.
This apogee Moon is 404 682 km (251 458 mi) away from Earth. It is 726 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 027 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
11 days after ascending node on 28 February 2018 at 05:03 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 14 March 2018 at 03:48 in ♒ Aquarius.
At 06:39 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-20.112°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠20.210° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 25 March 2018 at 02:04.
11 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 6 days on 17 March 2018 at 13:12 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
