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 ∠20° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 6 days on 23 September 2016 at 09:56.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2016 after 16 days on 16 October 2016 at 04:23.
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 5.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1810" and ∠1916".
The Moon is 28 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 206 of Meeus index or 1159 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 8 minutes and it is 2 hours and 19 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 2 hours and 24 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 39 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠112.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠144.6°.
10 days since point of perigee on 18 September 2016 at 17:00 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 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 4 October 2016 at 11:02 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 396 041 km (246 088 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 4 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 100 km (252 339 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 28 September 2016 at 22:06 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 13 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 13 October 2016 at 09:43 in ♓ Pisces.
5 days since the last northern standstill on 23 September 2016 at 16:44 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.475° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.546° at the point of next southern standstill on 8 October 2016 at 06:03 in ♑ Capricorn.
1 day 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 1 day on 1 October 2016 at 00:12 in ♎ Libra 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