Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 93% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 12 days young.
The moon rises in the afternoon and sets after midnight to early morning. It is visible to the southeast in early evening and it is up for most of the night.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠9° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 4 days on 27 June 2012 at 03:30.
Next Full Moon is the Buck Moon of July 2012 after 2 days on 3 July 2012 at 18:52.
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 4.2% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1968" and ∠1887".
The Moon is 12 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 154 of Meeus index or 1107 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 22 minutes and it is 1 hour and 52 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. 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 38 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 25 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 ∠217.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠248.7°.
Moon is at perigee at 18:01 about 15 days since last apogee on 16 June 2012 at 01:24 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next apogee on 13 July 2012 at 16:47 in ♉ Taurus.
This perigee Moon is 362 363 km (225 162 mi) away from Earth. It is 145 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 7 993 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
Moon is in ascending node in ♐ Sagittarius at 05:45 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next descending node later on 14 July 2012 at 20:55 in ♉ Taurus.
12 days since the last northern standstill on 18 June 2012 at 17:37 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.721° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-21.701° at the point of next southern standstill on 2 July 2012 at 03:33 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 05:45 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 2 days on 3 July 2012 at 18:52 in ♑ Capricorn 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