Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 98% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 13 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 ∠23° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 5 days on 27 June 2012 at 03:30.
Next Full Moon is the Buck Moon of July 2012 after 1 day on 3 July 2012 at 18:52.
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 3.7% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1958" and ∠1887".
The Moon is 13 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°.
1 day since point of perigee on 1 July 2012 at 18:01 in ♐ Sagittarius 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 13 July 2012 at 16:47 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 366 108 km (227 489 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 11 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 783 km (251 520 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 1 July 2012 at 05:45 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 14 July 2012 at 20:55 in ♉ Taurus.
At 03:33 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-21.701°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠21.665° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 16 July 2012 at 01:18.
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 1 day 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