Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 92% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 12 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 ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♒ Aquarius later.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 5 days on 18 August 2018 at 07:49.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2018 after 2 days on 26 August 2018 at 11:56.
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 7.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1898".
The Moon is 12 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 230 of Meeus index or 1183 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 4 minutes and it is 1 hour and 41 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 4 hours and 40 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 29 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 ∠11.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠28°.
Moon is at apogee at 11:23 about 12 days since last perigee on 10 August 2018 at 18:05 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 15 days until point of next perigee on 8 September 2018 at 01:21 in ♌ Leo.
This apogee Moon is 405 744 km (252 118 mi) away from Earth. It is 336 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 965 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
12 days after ascending node on 10 August 2018 at 13:40 in ♋ Cancer the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 24 August 2018 at 04:51 in ♒ Aquarius.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 22 August 2018 at 02:58 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-20.773° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠20.837° at the point of next northern standstill on 5 September 2018 at 06:56 in ♋ Cancer.
12 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♋ Cancer the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 2 days on 26 August 2018 at 11:56 in ♓ Pisces 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