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 ∠10° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 6 days on 7 February 2018 at 15:54.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2018 after 15 days on 2 March 2018 at 00:51.
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 8.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1781" and ∠1943".
The Moon is 28 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 223 of Meeus index or 1176 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 18 hours and 48 minutes and it is 2 hours and 42 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2018. 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 7 hours and 3 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 59 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 ∠198.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠227.1°.
2 days since point of apogee on 11 February 2018 at 14:16 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 13 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 27 February 2018 at 14:48 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 402 485 km (250 093 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 13 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 363 938 km (226 141 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♒ Aquarius at 21:11 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 28 February 2018 at 05:03 in ♌ Leo.
2 days since the last southern standstill on 11 February 2018 at 23:21 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-20.026° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠20.056° at the point of next northern standstill on 25 February 2018 at 20:07 in ♋ Cancer.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 15 February 2018 at 21:05 in ♒ Aquarius 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
