Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 2% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 28 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 about ∠22° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 26 July 2016 at 23:00.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2016 after 16 days on 18 August 2016 at 09:27.
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 0.4% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1898" and ∠1891".
The Moon is 28 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 204 of Meeus index or 1157 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 44 minutes and it is 2 hours and 35 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
The length of the current synodic month is 3 hours and 1 minute shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 9 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 ∠48.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠77.9°.
5 days since point of perigee on 27 July 2016 at 11:25 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 10 August 2016 at 00:05 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 377 725 km (234 707 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 8 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 266 km (251 199 mi).
9 days after descending node on 23 July 2016 at 07:49 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 5 August 2016 at 07:48 in ♍ Virgo.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 31 July 2016 at 04:53 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.529° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 13 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.481° at the point of next southern standstill on 14 August 2016 at 13:05 in ♐ Sagittarius.
23 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♍ Virgo the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 2 August 2016 at 20:45 in ♌ Leo 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