Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 41% 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 leaving the last ∠2° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♋ Cancer later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 1 day on 8 September 2012 at 13:15.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2012 after 20 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 6.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1780" and ∠1906".
The Moon is 23 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
2 days since point of apogee on 7 September 2012 at 06:00 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 19 September 2012 at 02:52 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 402 703 km (250 228 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 9 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 365 749 km (227 266 mi).
2 days after descending node on 7 September 2012 at 02:08 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 20 September 2012 at 12:54 in ♏ Scorpio.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 8 September 2012 at 18:10 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.244° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-21.135° at the point of next southern standstill on 22 September 2012 at 00:11 in ♐ Sagittarius.
16 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 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