Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 79% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 19 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 ∠5° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 4 days on 27 March 2013 at 09:27.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2013 after 25 days on 25 April 2013 at 19:57.
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 2.5% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1968" and ∠1920".
The Moon is 19 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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°.
Moon is at perigee at 03:55 about 12 days since last apogee on 19 March 2013 at 03:13 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 15 days until point of next apogee on 15 April 2013 at 22:21 in ♊ Gemini.
This perigee Moon is 367 494 km (228 350 mi) away from Earth. It is 4 986 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 2 862 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
1 day after ascending node on 30 March 2013 at 05:55 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 12 April 2013 at 12:12 in ♉ Taurus.
12 days since the last northern standstill on 18 March 2013 at 21:50 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.335° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-20.250° at the point of next southern standstill on 1 April 2013 at 12:03 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 9 days on 10 April 2013 at 09:35 in ♈ Aries 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