Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 60% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
The moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It is visible to the southwest and it is high in the sky after midnight.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠14° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 7 days on 12 September 2011 at 09:27.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2011 after 22 days on 12 October 2011 at 02:06.
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 5.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1810" and ∠1910".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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°.
4 days since point of apogee on 15 September 2011 at 06:23 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 28 September 2011 at 01:01 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 396 030 km (246 082 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 8 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 556 km (222 175 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♊ Gemini at 19:38 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 12 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 2 October 2011 at 09:09 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 20:05 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠22.890°. Over the upcoming 12 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-22.791° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 2 October 2011 at 11:38.
14 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 27 September 2011 at 11:09 in ♎ Libra the Moon is going to be in a New Moon geocentric conjunction with the Sun and thus forming the next Sun-Moon-Earth 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