Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 95% 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 passing first ∠3° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 5 days on 16 October 2018 at 18:02.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2018 after 2 days on 24 October 2018 at 16:45.
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 6.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1811" and ∠1928".
The Moon is 12 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 232 of Meeus index or 1185 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 15 minutes and it is 3 hours and 3 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 29 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 40 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 ∠49.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠79.7°.
4 days since point of apogee on 17 October 2018 at 19:16 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 31 October 2018 at 20:05 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 395 796 km (245 936 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 9 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 370 201 km (230 032 mi).
4 days after descending node on 17 October 2018 at 12:03 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 31 October 2018 at 03:46 in ♌ Leo.
6 days since the last southern standstill on 15 October 2018 at 17:26 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-21.154° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠21.292° at the point of next northern standstill on 29 October 2018 at 18:34 in ♋ Cancer.
18 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 2 days on 24 October 2018 at 16:45 in ♈ Aries 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