Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 61% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 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 passing about ∠16° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 6 days on 12 March 2017 at 14:54.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2017 after 22 days on 11 April 2017 at 06:08.
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 8.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1770" and ∠1927".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 212 of Meeus index or 1165 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 59 minutes and it is 2 hours and 40 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 45 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 24 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 ∠295° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠321.4°.
1 day since point of apogee on 18 March 2017 at 17:25 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 30 March 2017 at 12:39 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 405 004 km (251 658 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 11 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 363 855 km (226 089 mi).
8 days after ascending node on 11 March 2017 at 04:17 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 25 March 2017 at 15:41 in ♒ Aquarius.
12 days since the last northern standstill on 7 March 2017 at 00:43 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.861° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-18.912° at the point of next southern standstill on 21 March 2017 at 05:22 in ♑ Capricorn.
8 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 8 days on 28 March 2017 at 02:57 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