Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 83% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 11 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 ∠18° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 3 days on 26 July 2012 at 08:56.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2012 after 3 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 3.8% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1964" and ∠1890".
The Moon is 11 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 155 of Meeus index or 1108 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 30 minutes and it is 1 hour and 14 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 1 hour and 14 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 55 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠248.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠283.7°.
Moon is at perigee at 08:30 about 15 days since last apogee on 13 July 2012 at 16:47 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next apogee on 10 August 2012 at 10:51 in ♉ Taurus.
This perigee Moon is 367 318 km (228 241 mi) away from Earth. It is 4 810 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 3 038 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
1 day after ascending node on 28 July 2012 at 10:34 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 11 August 2012 at 00:04 in ♊ Gemini.
At 12:11 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-21.592°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠21.492° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 12 August 2012 at 09:47.
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 3 days on 2 August 2012 at 03:27 in ♒ Aquarius 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