Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 89% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 11 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 leaving the last ∠2° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♍ Virgo later.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 3 days on 24 March 2018 at 15:35.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2018 after 3 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 1.2% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1945" and ∠1922".
The Moon is 11 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 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 8 April 2018 at 05:32 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 368 506 km (228 979 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 10 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 145 km (251 124 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 27 March 2018 at 10:56 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 10 April 2018 at 08:09 in ♒ Aquarius.
3 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 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠-20.320° at the point of next southern standstill on 7 April 2018 at 14:37 in ♑ Capricorn.
1 day since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 3 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