Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 96% 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 ∠19° of ♓ Pisces tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 5 days on 30 September 2006 at 11:04.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2006 after 1 day on 7 October 2006 at 03:13.
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 2.7% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1972" and ∠1919".
The Moon is 13 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 83 of Meeus index or 1036 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 17 hours and 29 minutes and it is 25 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2006. 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 45 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 18 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 ∠182.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠207.1°.
13 days since point of apogee on 22 September 2006 at 05:21 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 6 October 2006 at 14:07 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 363 510 km (225 875 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 410 km (222 084 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♓ Pisces at 22:11 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 19 October 2006 at 09:34 in ♍ Virgo.
5 days since the last southern standstill on 29 September 2006 at 20:31 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.712° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.678° at the point of next northern standstill on 12 October 2006 at 08:52 in ♊ Gemini.
At 22:11 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 1 day on 7 October 2006 at 03:13 in ♈ Aries 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