Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 99% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 15 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 leaving the last ∠2° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♒ Aquarius later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 7 July 2009 at 09:21.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2009 after 28 days on 6 August 2009 at 00:55.
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 6.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1769" and ∠1887".
The Moon is 15 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 117 of Meeus index or 1070 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 7 hours and 1 minute and it is 27 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2009. 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 5 hours and 44 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 25 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 ∠349.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠4.5°.
1 day since point of apogee on 7 July 2009 at 21:39 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 13 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 21 July 2009 at 20:16 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 405 298 km (251 841 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 13 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 465 km (222 118 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♑ Capricorn at 15:24 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 22 July 2009 at 03:47 in ♌ Leo.
3 days since the last southern standstill on 5 July 2009 at 07:34 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.460° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠26.477° at the point of next northern standstill on 19 July 2009 at 13:01 in ♊ Gemini.
At 15:24 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 13 days on 22 July 2009 at 02:35 in ♋ Cancer 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