Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 94% 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 leaving the last ∠1° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♒ Aquarius later.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 5 days on 15 August 2002 at 10:12.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2002 after 2 days on 22 August 2002 at 22:29.
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 3.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1836" and ∠1896".
The Moon is 12 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 32 of Meeus index or 985 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 7 hours and 55 minutes and it is 12 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest 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 4 hours and 49 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 20 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 ∠324.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠343.1°.
9 days since point of perigee on 10 August 2002 at 23:32 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 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 26 August 2002 at 17:43 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 390 495 km (242 642 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 6 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 694 km (252 087 mi).
3 days after descending node on 17 August 2002 at 02:54 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 31 August 2002 at 14:43 in ♊ Gemini.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 19 August 2002 at 00:37 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-25.159° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 13 days to face maximum declination of ∠25.282° at the point of next northern standstill on 2 September 2002 at 16:03 in ♋ Cancer.
16 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 2 days on 22 August 2002 at 22:29 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