Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 34% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 23 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 ∠8° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 1 day on 9 August 2012 at 18:55.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2012 after 20 days on 31 August 2012 at 13:58.
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 6.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1770" and ∠1894".
The Moon is 23 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
1 day since point of apogee on 10 August 2012 at 10:51 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 23 August 2012 at 19:39 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 405 008 km (251 660 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 12 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 731 km (229 740 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♊ Gemini at 00:04 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 12 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 24 August 2012 at 11:38 in ♐ Sagittarius.
12 days since the last southern standstill on 29 July 2012 at 12:11 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-21.592° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠21.492° at the point of next northern standstill on 12 August 2012 at 09:47 in ♊ Gemini.
14 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 6 days on 17 August 2012 at 15:54 in ♌ Leo 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