Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 96% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 16 days old.
The moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It is visible to the southwest and it is high in the sky after midnight.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is leaving the last ∠4° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♊ Gemini later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 24 October 2018 at 16:45.
Next Full Moon is the Beaver Moon of November 2018 after 27 days on 23 November 2018 at 05:39.
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 1.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1899" and ∠1931".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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°.
8 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 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 31 October 2018 at 20:05 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 377 386 km (234 497 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 5 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 370 201 km (230 032 mi).
8 days after descending node on 17 October 2018 at 12:03 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 31 October 2018 at 03:46 in ♌ Leo.
10 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 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠21.292° at the point of next northern standstill on 29 October 2018 at 18:34 in ♋ Cancer.
22 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 12 days on 7 November 2018 at 16:02 in ♏ Scorpio 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