Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 45% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
The moon rises in the morning and sets in the evening. It is visible toward the southwest in early evening.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing first ∠4° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 7 days on 21 February 2012 at 22:35.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2012 after 7 days on 8 March 2012 at 09:40.
There is medium ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at very acute angle, so their combined tidal force is moderate.
Lunar disc appears visually 8.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1778" and ∠1936".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 150 of Meeus index or 1103 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 3 minutes and it is 38 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 18 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 44 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 ∠107.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠142.2°.
1 day since point of apogee on 27 February 2012 at 14:01 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 10 March 2012 at 10:02 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 403 227 km (250 554 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 9 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 362 401 km (225 186 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♊ Gemini at 22:37 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 13 March 2012 at 20:41 in ♐ Sagittarius.
13 days since the last southern standstill on 16 February 2012 at 08:36 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-22.299° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠22.150° at the point of next northern standstill on 1 March 2012 at 16:13 in ♊ Gemini.
13 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 8 March 2012 at 09:40 in ♍ Virgo 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