Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 68% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 9 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 ∠16° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 1 day on 16 August 2010 at 18:14.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2010 after 6 days on 24 August 2010 at 17:05.
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 2.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1851" and ∠1896".
The Moon is 9 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 131 of Meeus index or 1084 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 7 hours and 22 minutes and it is 53 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2010. 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 22 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 47 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 ∠349.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠4.6°.
7 days since point of perigee on 10 August 2010 at 17:56 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 25 August 2010 at 05:51 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 387 328 km (240 674 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 6 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 390 km (252 519 mi).
10 days after descending node on 7 August 2010 at 17:24 in ♋ Cancer the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 20 August 2010 at 12:13 in ♑ Capricorn.
At 17:07 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-24.929°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠24.807° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 2 September 2010 at 11:20.
25 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 24 August 2010 at 17:05 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