Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 86% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 11 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 ∠24° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 4 days on 26 September 2009 at 04:50.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2009 after 3 days on 4 October 2009 at 06:10.
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 7.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1777" and ∠1916".
The Moon is 11 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 120 of Meeus index or 1073 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 49 minutes and it is 2 hours and 52 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 shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 14 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 ∠39.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠65.2°.
2 days since point of apogee on 28 September 2009 at 03:33 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 13 October 2009 at 12:28 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 403 287 km (250 591 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 13 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 068 km (229 328 mi).
2 days after ascending node on 28 September 2009 at 06:52 in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 11 October 2009 at 23:01 in ♋ Cancer.
5 days since the last southern standstill on 25 September 2009 at 04:03 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.188° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠26.057° at the point of next northern standstill on 9 October 2009 at 09:49 in ♊ Gemini.
2 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 3 days on 4 October 2009 at 06:10 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