Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 66% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 20 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 ∠25° of ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 5 days on 25 February 2013 at 20:26.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2013 after 23 days on 27 March 2013 at 09:27.
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 1.4% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1963" and ∠1935".
The Moon is 20 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 162 of Meeus index or 1115 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 31 minutes and it is 1 hour and 13 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
The length of the current synodic month is 13 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 56 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 ∠44.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠73.6°.
12 days since point of apogee on 19 February 2013 at 06:30 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 5 March 2013 at 23:20 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 365 092 km (226 858 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 2 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 954 km (229 879 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♏ Scorpio at 02:30 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 12 days until Moon's next descending node later on 16 March 2013 at 06:15 in ♉ Taurus.
11 days since the last northern standstill on 19 February 2013 at 13:35 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.583° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-20.453° at the point of next southern standstill on 5 March 2013 at 06:41 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 02:30 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 8 days on 11 March 2013 at 19:51 in ♓ Pisces 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