Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 28% 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 ∠18° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 2 days on 11 July 2012 at 01:48.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2012 after 19 days on 2 August 2012 at 03:27.
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 6.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1888".
The Moon is 24 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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 apogee at 16:47 about 11 days since last perigee on 1 July 2012 at 18:01 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 15 days until point of next perigee on 29 July 2012 at 08:30 in ♐ Sagittarius.
This apogee Moon is 404 783 km (251 520 mi) away from Earth. It is 625 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 1 926 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
12 days after ascending node on 1 July 2012 at 05:45 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 14 July 2012 at 20:55 in ♉ Taurus.
11 days since the last southern standstill on 2 July 2012 at 03:33 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-21.701° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠21.665° at the point of next northern standstill on 16 July 2012 at 01:18 in ♊ Gemini.
12 days 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 19 July 2012 at 04:24 in ♋ Cancer 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