Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 81% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 10 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 ∠25° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 3 days on 6 August 2011 at 11:08.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2011 after 4 days on 13 August 2011 at 18:58.
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 0.6% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1905" and ∠1893".
The Moon is 10 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 143 of Meeus index or 1096 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 24 minutes and it is 19 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. 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 20 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 49 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 ∠312.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠333.4°.
6 days since point of perigee on 2 August 2011 at 20:59 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 18 August 2011 at 16:23 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 376 296 km (233 819 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 9 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 161 km (251 755 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♐ Sagittarius at 06:35 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next descending node later on 23 August 2011 at 17:23 in ♊ Gemini.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 8 August 2011 at 23:15 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-23.270° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 14 days to face maximum declination of ∠23.149° at the point of next northern standstill on 23 August 2011 at 12:17 in ♊ Gemini.
At 06:35 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 4 days on 13 August 2011 at 18:58 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