Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 60% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 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 ∠4° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 6 days on 31 August 2012 at 13:58.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2012 after 22 days on 30 September 2012 at 03:19.
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 7.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1905".
The Moon is 21 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°.
Moon is at apogee at 06:00 about 14 days since last perigee on 23 August 2012 at 19:39 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next perigee on 19 September 2012 at 02:52 in ♏ Scorpio.
This apogee Moon is 404 296 km (251 218 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 112 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 413 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
Moon is in descending node in ♉ Taurus at 02:08 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 20 September 2012 at 12:54 in ♏ Scorpio.
12 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 day to face maximum declination of ∠21.244° at the point of next northern standstill on 8 September 2012 at 18:10 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 8 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