Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 27% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 24 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 ∠9° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 2 days on 2 October 2018 at 09:45.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2018 after 20 days on 24 October 2018 at 16:45.
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 2.8% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1919".
The Moon is 24 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 231 of Meeus index or 1184 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 45 minutes and it is 2 hours and 30 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 2 hours and 59 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 10 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 ∠28° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠49.6°.
14 days since point of apogee on 20 September 2018 at 00:54 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 5 October 2018 at 22:29 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 363 324 km (225 759 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 366 396 km (227 668 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♌ Leo at 03:10 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 17 October 2018 at 12:03 in ♒ Aquarius.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 2 October 2018 at 13:03 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.037° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-21.154° at the point of next southern standstill on 15 October 2018 at 17:26 in ♑ Capricorn.
At 03:10 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 9 October 2018 at 03:47 in ♎ Libra 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