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 ∠8° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 2 days on 31 August 2002 at 02:31.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2002 after 19 days on 21 September 2002 at 13:59.
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 2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1865" and ∠1902".
The Moon is 24 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
6 days since point of apogee on 26 August 2002 at 17:43 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 8 September 2002 at 03:14 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 384 332 km (238 813 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 5 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 358 745 km (222 914 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 31 August 2002 at 14:43 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 13 September 2002 at 03:39 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 16:03 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠25.282°. Over the upcoming 12 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-25.377° at the point of next southern standstill in ♑ Capricorn on 15 September 2002 at 05:34.
1 day 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 4 days on 7 September 2002 at 03:10 in ♍ Virgo 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
