Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 67% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 20 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 first ∠3° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 5 days on 8 March 2012 at 09:40.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2012 after 24 days on 6 April 2012 at 19:19.
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 1.8% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1965" and ∠1930".
The Moon is 20 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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°.
3 days since point of perigee on 10 March 2012 at 10:02 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 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 26 March 2012 at 06:04 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 364 721 km (226 627 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 12 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 780 km (252 140 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♐ Sagittarius at 20:41 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next descending node later on 28 March 2012 at 00:19 in ♊ Gemini.
11 days since the last northern standstill on 1 March 2012 at 16:13 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠22.150° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-22.032° at the point of next southern standstill on 14 March 2012 at 14:09 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 20:41 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 9 days on 22 March 2012 at 14:37 in ♓ Pisces 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