Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 81% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 10 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 ∠6° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 3 days on 16 September 2018 at 23:15.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2018 after 4 days on 25 September 2018 at 02:53.
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 7.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1911".
The Moon is 10 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 231 of Meeus index or 1184 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 45 minutes and it is 2 hours and 30 minutes shorter 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 59 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 10 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 ∠28° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠49.6°.
Moon is at apogee at 00:54 about 11 days since last perigee on 8 September 2018 at 01:21 in ♌ Leo 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 5 October 2018 at 22:29 in ♌ Leo.
This apogee Moon is 404 875 km (251 578 mi) away from Earth. It is 533 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 1 834 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
Moon is in descending node in ♒ Aquarius at 09:30 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 4 October 2018 at 03:10 in ♌ Leo.
2 days since the last southern standstill on 18 September 2018 at 09:35 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-20.909° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠21.037° at the point of next northern standstill on 2 October 2018 at 13:03 in ♋ Cancer.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♋ Cancer the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 4 days on 25 September 2018 at 02:53 in ♈ Aries 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
