Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 95% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 17 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 ∠17° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 2 days on 12 October 2011 at 02:06.
Next Full Moon is the Beaver Moon of November 2011 after 27 days on 10 November 2011 at 20:16.
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 8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1776" and ∠1924".
The Moon is 17 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 145 of Meeus index or 1098 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 47 minutes and it is 1 hour and 27 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. 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 3 hours and 57 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 12 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 ∠350.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠5.3°.
2 days since point of apogee on 12 October 2011 at 11:43 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 26 October 2011 at 12:26 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 403 516 km (250 733 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 12 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 051 km (221 861 mi).
12 days after ascending node on 2 October 2011 at 09:09 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 16 October 2011 at 21:01 in ♊ Gemini.
12 days since the last southern standstill on 2 October 2011 at 11:38 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-22.791° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠22.665° at the point of next northern standstill on 17 October 2011 at 02:06 in ♊ Gemini.
12 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 12 days on 26 October 2011 at 19:56 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