Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 7% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 3 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 about ∠15° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 2 days on 2 August 2016 at 20:45.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2016 after 12 days on 18 August 2016 at 09:27.
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 4.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1809" and ∠1892".
The Moon is 3 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°.
9 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 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 10 August 2016 at 00:05 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 396 143 km (246 152 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 4 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 266 km (251 199 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♍ Virgo at 07:48 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 19 August 2016 at 14:14 in ♓ Pisces.
5 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 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.481° at the point of next southern standstill on 14 August 2016 at 13:05 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 07:48 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 12 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