Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 20% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 25 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 first ∠0° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 3 days on 11 July 2012 at 01:48.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2012 after 18 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 25 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°.
1 day since point of apogee on 13 July 2012 at 16:47 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 14 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 29 July 2012 at 08:30 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 405 333 km (251 862 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 14 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 367 318 km (228 241 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♉ Taurus at 20:55 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 28 July 2012 at 10:34 in ♐ Sagittarius.
12 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 day to face maximum declination of ∠21.665° at the point of next northern standstill on 16 July 2012 at 01:18 in ♊ Gemini.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 4 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