Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 30% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 24 days old.
The moon rises after midnight to early morning and sets in the afternoon. It is visible in the early morning low to the east.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠20° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 1 day on 14 February 2012 at 17:04.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2012 after 20 days on 8 March 2012 at 09:40.
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 0.1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1945" and ∠1942".
The Moon is 24 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 149 of Meeus index or 1102 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 55 minutes and it is 1 hour and 8 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 2 hours and 11 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 52 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 ∠70.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠107.8°.
4 days since point of perigee on 11 February 2012 at 18:32 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 27 February 2012 at 14:01 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 368 554 km (229 009 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 11 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 864 km (251 571 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 15 February 2012 at 20:16 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 13 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 29 February 2012 at 22:37 in ♊ Gemini.
At 08:36 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-22.299°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠22.150° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 1 March 2012 at 16:13.
1 day 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 5 days on 21 February 2012 at 22:35 in ♒ Aquarius 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