Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 96% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 16 days old.
The moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It is visible to the southwest and it is high in the sky after midnight.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing first ∠3° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 31 August 2012 at 13:58.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2012 after 27 days on 30 September 2012 at 03:19.
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 4.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1812" and ∠1902".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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 perigee on 23 August 2012 at 19:39 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 7 September 2012 at 06:00 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 395 530 km (245 771 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 4 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 296 km (251 218 mi).
9 days after ascending node on 24 August 2012 at 11:38 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 7 September 2012 at 02:08 in ♉ Taurus.
7 days since the last southern standstill on 25 August 2012 at 18:40 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-21.379° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠21.244° at the point of next northern standstill on 8 September 2012 at 18:10 in ♊ Gemini.
9 days 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 13 days on 16 September 2012 at 02:11 in ♍ Virgo 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