Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 86% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 18 days old.
The moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It is visible to the southwest and it is high in the sky after midnight.
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 ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♏ Scorpio later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 3 days on 27 February 2002 at 09:17.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2002 after 26 days on 28 March 2002 at 18:25.
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 1.1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1956" and ∠1936".
The Moon is 18 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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°.
2 days since point of perigee on 27 February 2002 at 19:47 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 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 14 March 2002 at 01:09 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 366 372 km (227 653 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 11 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 705 km (252 715 mi).
8 days after ascending node on 22 February 2002 at 06:26 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 6 March 2002 at 16:19 in ♐ Sagittarius.
7 days 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 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-24.510° at the point of next southern standstill on 8 March 2002 at 01:59 in ♑ Capricorn.
8 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 11 days on 14 March 2002 at 02:03 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