Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 91% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 12 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 ∠24° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 4 days on 17 July 2002 at 04:47.
Next Full Moon is the Buck Moon of July 2002 after 2 days on 24 July 2002 at 09:07.
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 0.3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1893" and ∠1888".
The Moon is 12 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 31 of Meeus index or 984 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 49 minutes and it is 54 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 55 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 14 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 ∠300.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠324.8°.
6 days since point of perigee on 14 July 2002 at 13:13 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 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 30 July 2002 at 01:45 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 378 576 km (235 236 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 8 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 742 km (251 495 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♐ Sagittarius at 00:41 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 August 2002 at 11:03 in ♊ Gemini.
11 days since the last northern standstill on 9 July 2002 at 22:03 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠25.045° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-25.053° at the point of next southern standstill on 22 July 2002 at 19:08 in ♑ Capricorn.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 2 days on 24 July 2002 at 09:07 in ♒ Aquarius 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