Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 3% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 27 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 ∠6° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 6 days on 11 July 2012 at 01:48.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2012 after 15 days on 2 August 2012 at 03:27.
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 5.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1795" and ∠1888".
The Moon is 27 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°.
3 days 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 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 29 July 2012 at 08:30 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 399 421 km (248 189 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 11 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 367 318 km (228 241 mi).
2 days after descending node on 14 July 2012 at 20:55 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 28 July 2012 at 10:34 in ♐ Sagittarius.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 16 July 2012 at 01:18 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.665° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-21.592° at the point of next southern standstill on 29 July 2012 at 12:11 in ♐ Sagittarius.
16 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day 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