Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 13% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 3 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 ∠7° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 2 days on 15 October 2012 at 12:02.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2012 after 11 days on 29 October 2012 at 19:50.
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 2.4% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1926".
The Moon is 3 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 158 of Meeus index or 1111 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 5 minutes and it is 29 minutes shorter 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 39 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 30 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 ∠334.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠351.3°.
1 day since point of perigee on 17 October 2012 at 01:02 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 14 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 1 November 2012 at 15:30 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 363 320 km (225 757 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 14 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 050 km (252 308 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 17 October 2012 at 18:27 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 31 October 2012 at 10:36 in ♉ Taurus.
12 days since the last northern standstill on 6 October 2012 at 01:40 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.024° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-20.964° at the point of next southern standstill on 19 October 2012 at 06:49 in ♐ Sagittarius.
1 day 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 11 days on 29 October 2012 at 19:50 in ♉ Taurus 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