Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 3% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 2 days young.
The moon rises in the morning and sets in the evening. It is visible toward the southwest in early evening.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing first ∠2° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 1 day on 2 August 2016 at 20:45.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2016 after 13 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 3.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1829" and ∠1891".
The Moon is 2 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 205 of Meeus index or 1158 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 19 minutes and it is 2 hours and 49 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 25 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 44 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 ∠77.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠112.8°.
8 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 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 10 August 2016 at 00:05 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 391 937 km (243 538 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 5 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 266 km (251 199 mi).
12 days after descending node on 23 July 2016 at 07:49 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 5 August 2016 at 07:48 in ♍ Virgo.
4 days 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 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.481° at the point of next southern standstill on 14 August 2016 at 13:05 in ♐ Sagittarius.
26 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 13 days on 18 August 2016 at 09:27 in ♒ Aquarius 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