Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 44% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
The moon rises in the morning and sets in the evening. It is visible toward the southwest in early evening.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠24° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 6 days on 17 September 2020 at 11:00.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2020 after 8 days on 1 October 2020 at 21:05.
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 0.7% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1927" and ∠1913".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 256 of Meeus index or 1209 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 31 minutes and it is 1 hour and 5 minutes shorter 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 13 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 56 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 ∠341.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠357°.
4 days since point of perigee on 18 September 2020 at 13:44 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 3 October 2020 at 17:22 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 372 045 km (231 178 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 10 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 321 km (252 476 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♐ Sagittarius at 12:33 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 8 October 2020 at 00:29 in ♊ Gemini.
11 days since the last northern standstill on 12 September 2020 at 05:25 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠24.353° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-24.458° at the point of next southern standstill on 24 September 2020 at 19:11 in ♑ Capricorn.
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 8 days on 1 October 2020 at 21:05 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