Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 4% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 2 days young.
The moon rises in the morning and sets in the evening. It is visible toward the southwest in early evening.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠20° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 1 day on 17 August 2012 at 15:54.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2012 after 12 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 0.7% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1910" and ∠1896".
The Moon is 2 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 156 of Meeus index or 1109 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 16 minutes and it is 24 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 2 hours and 28 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 41 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 ∠283.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠312.9°.
9 days 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 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 23 August 2012 at 19:39 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 375 251 km (233 170 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 4 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 731 km (229 740 mi).
8 days after descending node on 11 August 2012 at 00:04 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 24 August 2012 at 11:38 in ♐ Sagittarius.
7 days since the last northern standstill on 12 August 2012 at 09:47 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.492° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠-21.379° at the point of next southern standstill on 25 August 2012 at 18:40 in ♐ Sagittarius.
22 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 12 days on 31 August 2012 at 13:58 in ♓ Pisces 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