Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 98% 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 about ∠24° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 30 September 2012 at 03:19.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2012 after 28 days on 29 October 2012 at 19:50.
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 6.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1789" and ∠1917".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 157 of Meeus index or 1110 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 52 minutes and it is 13 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2012. 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 52 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 17 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 ∠312.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠334.3°.
12 days since point of perigee on 19 September 2012 at 02:52 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 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 5 October 2012 at 00:43 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 400 629 km (248 939 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 3 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 162 km (251 756 mi).
10 days after ascending node on 20 September 2012 at 12:54 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 4 October 2012 at 05:15 in ♉ Taurus.
9 days since the last southern standstill on 22 September 2012 at 00:11 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-21.135° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠21.024° at the point of next northern standstill on 6 October 2012 at 01:40 in ♊ Gemini.
10 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 14 days on 15 October 2012 at 12:02 in ♎ Libra 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