Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 97% 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 leaving the last ∠3° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♊ Gemini later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 29 October 2012 at 19:50.
Next Full Moon is the Beaver Moon of November 2012 after 28 days on 28 November 2012 at 14:46.
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 8.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1769" and ∠1933".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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°.
14 days 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 day until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 1 November 2012 at 15:30 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 405 231 km (251 799 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next day until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 050 km (252 308 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♉ Taurus at 10:36 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 14 November 2012 at 04:37 in ♏ Scorpio.
12 days since the last southern standstill on 19 October 2012 at 06:49 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-20.964° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠20.920° at the point of next northern standstill on 2 November 2012 at 08:15 in ♊ Gemini.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 13 days on 13 November 2012 at 22:08 in ♏ Scorpio 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