Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 10% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 3 days young.
The moon rises in the morning and sets in the evening. It is visible toward the southwest in early evening.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠25° of ♓ Pisces tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 3 days on 3 February 2011 at 02:31.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2011 after 11 days on 18 February 2011 at 08:36.
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 9.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1946".
The Moon is 3 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 137 of Meeus index or 1090 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 18 hours and 15 minutes and it is 29 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2011. 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 31 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 32 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 ∠139.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠167°.
Moon is at apogee at 23:13 about 15 days since last perigee on 22 January 2011 at 00:10 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next perigee on 19 February 2011 at 07:27 in ♍ Virgo.
This apogee Moon is 405 924 km (252 229 mi) away from Earth. It is 516 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 785 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
6 days after ascending node on 30 January 2011 at 18:29 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 14 February 2011 at 08:14 in ♋ Cancer.
7 days since the last southern standstill on 29 January 2011 at 16:26 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-24.180° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠24.080° at the point of next northern standstill on 13 February 2011 at 09:00 in ♊ Gemini.
6 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 11 days on 18 February 2011 at 08:36 in ♌ Leo 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