Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 98% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 13 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 ∠7° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 6 days on 6 March 2006 at 20:16.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2006 after 1 day on 14 March 2006 at 23:35.
There is medium ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at very acute angle, so their combined tidal force is moderate.
Lunar disc appears visually 8.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1930".
The Moon is 13 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 76 of Meeus index or 1029 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 44 minutes and it is 15 minutes longer 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 shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 9 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 ∠2.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠19°.
Moon is at apogee at 01:44 about 13 days since last perigee on 27 February 2006 at 20:27 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 14 days until point of next perigee on 28 March 2006 at 07:13 in ♓ Pisces.
This apogee Moon is 406 273 km (252 446 mi) away from Earth. It is 865 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 436 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
11 days after ascending node on 1 March 2006 at 16:25 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 15 March 2006 at 19:52 in ♍ Virgo.
5 days since the last northern standstill on 8 March 2006 at 00:05 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.694° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.725° at the point of next southern standstill on 22 March 2006 at 16:53 in ♐ Sagittarius.
11 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♓ Pisces the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 14 March 2006 at 23:35 in ♍ Virgo 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