Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 72% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 9 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 about ∠22° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 2 days on 14 March 2019 at 10:27.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2019 after 4 days on 21 March 2019 at 01:43.
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 1.5% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1957" and ∠1929".
The Moon is 9 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 237 of Meeus index or 1190 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 47 minutes and it is 2 hours and 52 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decrease with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at perigee (∠0° or ∠360°).
The length of the current synodic month is 4 hours and 2 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠200.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠228.7°.
12 days since point of apogee on 4 March 2019 at 11:25 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 19 March 2019 at 19:47 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 366 198 km (227 545 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 3 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 359 381 km (223 309 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♋ Cancer at 16:22 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 29 March 2019 at 13:08 in ♑ Capricorn.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 15 March 2019 at 17:59 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.761° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-21.863° at the point of next southern standstill on 28 March 2019 at 13:02 in ♑ Capricorn.
At 16:22 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 21 March 2019 at 01:43 in ♎ Libra 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