Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 26% 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 ∠16° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 2 days on 6 March 2002 at 01:25.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2002 after 20 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 5.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1828" and ∠1933".
The Moon is 24 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
8 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 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 14 March 2002 at 01:09 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 392 125 km (243 655 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 5 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 705 km (252 715 mi).
1 day after descending node on 6 March 2002 at 16:19 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 21 March 2002 at 08:14 in ♊ Gemini.
At 01:59 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-24.510°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠24.668° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 22 March 2002 at 19:53.
14 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 5 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