Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 98% 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 ∠2° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♉ Taurus later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 1 October 2020 at 21:05.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2020 after 28 days on 31 October 2020 at 14:49.
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 8.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1918".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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°.
Moon is at apogee at 17:22 about 15 days since last perigee on 18 September 2020 at 13:44 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 13 days until point of next perigee on 16 October 2020 at 23:46 in ♎ Libra.
This apogee Moon is 406 321 km (252 476 mi) away from Earth. It is 913 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 388 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
9 days after descending node on 23 September 2020 at 12:33 in ♐ Sagittarius 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 8 October 2020 at 00:29 in ♊ Gemini.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 24 September 2020 at 19:11 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-24.458° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠24.613° at the point of next northern standstill on 9 October 2020 at 13:07 in ♋ Cancer.
22 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 13 days on 16 October 2020 at 19:31 in ♎ Libra 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