Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 78% 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 ∠18° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 2 days on 4 September 2011 at 17:39.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2011 after 4 days on 12 September 2011 at 09:27.
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 1.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1869" and ∠1904".
The Moon is 10 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 144 of Meeus index or 1097 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 5 minutes and it is 42 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2011. 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 39 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 30 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 ∠333.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠350.1°.
7 days since point of perigee on 30 August 2011 at 17:35 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 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 15 September 2011 at 06:23 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 383 479 km (238 283 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 7 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 068 km (252 319 mi).
2 days after ascending node on 5 September 2011 at 07:36 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 19 September 2011 at 19:38 in ♊ Gemini.
2 days since the last southern standstill on 5 September 2011 at 05:01 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-23.047° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠22.890° at the point of next northern standstill on 19 September 2011 at 20:05 in ♊ Gemini.
2 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 4 days on 12 September 2011 at 09:27 in ♓ Pisces 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