Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 99% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 14 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 about ∠21° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 6 days on 15 March 2016 at 17:03.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2016 after 1 day on 23 March 2016 at 12:01.
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 7.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1783" and ∠1925".
The Moon is 14 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 200 of Meeus index or 1153 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 29 minutes and it is 1 hour and 23 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 3 hours and 15 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 54 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 ∠339.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠355.6°.
12 days since point of perigee on 10 March 2016 at 07:02 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 25 March 2016 at 14:16 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 401 957 km (249 765 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 3 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 125 km (252 354 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♍ Virgo at 12:59 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next descending node later on 5 April 2016 at 17:27 in ♓ Pisces.
6 days since the last northern standstill on 16 March 2016 at 05:01 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.206° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.239° at the point of next southern standstill on 30 March 2016 at 22:12 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 12:59 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 1 day on 23 March 2016 at 12:01 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