Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 91% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 17 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 passing about ∠6° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 3 days on 21 October 2002 at 07:20.
Next Full Moon is the Beaver Moon of November 2002 after 26 days on 20 November 2002 at 01:34.
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 6.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1801" and ∠1929".
The Moon is 17 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 34 of Meeus index or 987 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 17 minutes and it is 1 hour and 43 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
The length of the current synodic month is 3 hours and 27 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 42 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 ∠358.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠14°.
4 days since point of apogee on 20 October 2002 at 04:41 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 4 November 2002 at 00:50 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 397 957 km (247 279 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 10 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 358 154 km (222 547 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♊ Gemini at 18:18 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next descending node later on 6 November 2002 at 15:22 in ♐ Sagittarius.
12 days since the last southern standstill on 12 October 2002 at 11:51 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-25.624° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠25.735° at the point of next northern standstill on 27 October 2002 at 06:34 in ♋ Cancer.
At 18:18 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 11 days on 4 November 2002 at 20:34 in ♏ Scorpio 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