Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 8% 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 leaving the last ∠4° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♉ Taurus later.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 2 days on 11 March 2013 at 19:51.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2013 after 12 days on 27 March 2013 at 09:27.
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 6.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1811" and ∠1929".
The Moon is 3 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 163 of Meeus index or 1116 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 44 minutes and it is 1 hour and 9 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 1 hour longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 3 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠73.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠110.3°.
8 days since point of perigee on 5 March 2013 at 23:20 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 19 March 2013 at 03:13 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 395 726 km (245 893 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 4 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 262 km (251 197 mi).
11 days after ascending node on 3 March 2013 at 02:30 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 16 March 2013 at 06:15 in ♉ Taurus.
9 days since the last southern standstill on 5 March 2013 at 06:41 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-20.453° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠20.335° at the point of next northern standstill on 18 March 2013 at 21:50 in ♊ Gemini.
11 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 12 days on 27 March 2013 at 09:27 in ♎ Libra 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