Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 39% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 23 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 ∠11° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 1 day on 16 March 2020 at 09:34.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2020 after 21 days on 8 April 2020 at 02:35.
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 3.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1862" and ∠1928".
The Moon is 23 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 249 of Meeus index or 1202 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 17 hours and 56 minutes and it is 58 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2020. 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 5 hours and 12 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 51 minutes 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 ∠152.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠177.9°.
7 days since point of perigee on 10 March 2020 at 06:33 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 24 March 2020 at 15:23 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 384 959 km (239 202 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 7 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 690 km (252 705 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♑ Capricorn at 01:00 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 31 March 2020 at 16:51 in ♊ Gemini.
At 14:07 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-23.540°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠23.702° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 1 April 2020 at 09:12.
12 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 24 March 2020 at 09:28 in ♈ Aries 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