Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 81% 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 first ∠0° of ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 4 days on 22 February 2016 at 18:20.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2016 after 25 days on 23 March 2016 at 12:01.
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 9.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1769" and ∠1937".
The Moon is 19 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 199 of Meeus index or 1152 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 16 minutes and it is 1 hour and 47 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 1 hour and 28 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 41 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 ∠319.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠339.5°.
Moon is at apogee at 03:28 about 16 days since last perigee on 11 February 2016 at 02:42 in ♓ Pisces the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next perigee on 10 March 2016 at 07:02 in ♈ Aries.
This apogee Moon is 405 383 km (251 893 mi) away from Earth. It is 25 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 1 326 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
3 days after ascending node on 24 February 2016 at 06:10 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 9 March 2016 at 06:31 in ♓ Pisces.
9 days since the last northern standstill on 17 February 2016 at 23:18 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.254° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.210° at the point of next southern standstill on 3 March 2016 at 14:19 in ♐ Sagittarius.
3 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♍ Virgo the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 10 days on 9 March 2016 at 01:54 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