Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 95% 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 ∠18° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 5 days on 2 August 2006 at 08:46.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2006 after 1 day on 9 August 2006 at 10:54.
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 1.3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1917" and ∠1892".
The Moon is 12 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 81 of Meeus index or 1034 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 39 minutes and it is 1 hour and 56 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 1 hour and 55 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 8 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠131.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠158.8°.
8 days since point of apogee on 29 July 2006 at 13:02 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 10 August 2006 at 18:27 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 373 948 km (232 361 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 3 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 359 755 km (223 541 mi).
8 days after descending node on 29 July 2006 at 16:58 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 12 August 2006 at 01:31 in ♓ Pisces.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 6 August 2006 at 04:11 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.594° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.645° at the point of next northern standstill on 18 August 2006 at 19:43 in ♊ Gemini.
22 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♓ Pisces the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 9 August 2006 at 10:54 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