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 leaving the last ∠2° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♍ Virgo later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 3 September 2018 at 02:37.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2018 after 16 days on 25 September 2018 at 02:53.
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 3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1963" and ∠1905".
The Moon is 28 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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 perigee at 01:21 about 15 days since last apogee on 23 August 2018 at 11:23 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next apogee on 20 September 2018 at 00:54 in ♒ Aquarius.
This perigee Moon is 361 355 km (224 536 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 153 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 9 001 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
1 day after ascending node on 6 September 2018 at 22:42 in ♋ Cancer the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 20 September 2018 at 09:30 in ♒ Aquarius.
3 days since the last northern standstill on 5 September 2018 at 06:56 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.837° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠-20.909° at the point of next southern standstill on 18 September 2018 at 09:35 in ♑ Capricorn.
1 day 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 1 day on 9 September 2018 at 18:01 in ♍ Virgo 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