Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 35% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 23 days old.
The moon rises after midnight to early morning and sets in the afternoon. It is visible in the early morning low to the east.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing first ∠1° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 1 day on 1 March 2016 at 23:11.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2016 after 20 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 5.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1835" and ∠1935".
The Moon is 23 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
5 days since point of apogee on 27 February 2016 at 03:28 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 10 March 2016 at 07:02 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 390 702 km (242 771 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 6 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 359 509 km (223 389 mi).
8 days after ascending node on 24 February 2016 at 06:10 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 5 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 9 March 2016 at 06:31 in ♓ Pisces.
At 14:19 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-18.210°. This is the year's southernmost lunar standstill of 2016. Over the upcoming 12 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠18.206° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 16 March 2016 at 05:01.
8 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 5 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