Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 96% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 16 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 leaving the last ∠3° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♏ Scorpio later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 23 March 2016 at 12:01.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2016 after 27 days on 22 April 2016 at 05:24.
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 8.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1923".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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°.
Moon is at apogee at 14:16 about 15 days since last perigee on 10 March 2016 at 07:02 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 13 days until point of next perigee on 7 April 2016 at 17:36 in ♈ Aries.
This apogee Moon is 406 125 km (252 354 mi) away from Earth. It is 717 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 584 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
2 days after ascending node on 22 March 2016 at 12:59 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 5 April 2016 at 17:27 in ♓ Pisces.
9 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 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.239° at the point of next southern standstill on 30 March 2016 at 22:12 in ♐ Sagittarius.
2 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 12 days on 7 April 2016 at 11:24 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