Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 80% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 10 days young.
The moon rises in the afternoon and sets after midnight to early morning. It is visible to the southeast in early evening and it is up for most of the night.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing first ∠0° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 2 days on 12 September 2013 at 17:08.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2013 after 3 days on 19 September 2013 at 11:13.
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 3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1967" and ∠1908".
The Moon is 10 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 169 of Meeus index or 1122 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 58 minutes and it is 43 minutes longer 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 14 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 49 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 ∠249.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠285.3°.
Moon is at perigee at 16:34 about 15 days since last apogee on 30 August 2013 at 23:46 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next apogee on 27 September 2013 at 18:17 in ♋ Cancer.
This perigee Moon is 367 388 km (228 284 mi) away from Earth. It is 4 880 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 2 968 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
5 days after ascending node on 9 September 2013 at 17:29 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 22 September 2013 at 13:48 in ♉ Taurus.
2 days since the last southern standstill on 12 September 2013 at 18:30 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-19.685° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠19.599° at the point of next northern standstill on 26 September 2013 at 01:03 in ♊ Gemini.
5 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 3 days on 19 September 2013 at 11:13 in ♓ Pisces 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