Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 80% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 10 days young.
The moon rises in the afternoon and sets after midnight to early morning. It is visible to the southeast in early evening and it is up for most of the night.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠14° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 2 days on 24 March 2018 at 15:35.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2018 after 4 days on 31 March 2018 at 12:37.
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 1.9% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1960" and ∠1923".
The Moon is 10 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 225 of Meeus index or 1178 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 46 minutes and it is 2 hours and 55 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 2 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 7 hours and 1 minute 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 ∠262.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠296.5°.
1 day since point of perigee on 26 March 2018 at 17:17 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 8 April 2018 at 05:32 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 365 708 km (227 240 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 11 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 145 km (251 124 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♌ Leo at 10:56 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next descending node later on 10 April 2018 at 08:09 in ♒ Aquarius.
2 days since the last northern standstill on 25 March 2018 at 02:04 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.210° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-20.320° at the point of next southern standstill on 7 April 2018 at 14:37 in ♑ Capricorn.
At 10:56 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 4 days on 31 March 2018 at 12:37 in ♎ Libra 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