Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 65% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 20 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 ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♋ Cancer later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 6 days on 1 October 2020 at 21:05.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2020 after 23 days on 31 October 2020 at 14:49.
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 5.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1818" and ∠1921".
The Moon is 20 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°.
4 days since point of apogee on 3 October 2020 at 17:22 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 16 October 2020 at 23:46 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 394 207 km (244 949 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 8 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 356 913 km (221 775 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♊ Gemini at 00:29 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 12 days until Moon's next descending node later on 20 October 2020 at 15:53 in ♐ Sagittarius.
13 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 day to face maximum declination of ∠24.613° at the point of next northern standstill on 9 October 2020 at 13:07 in ♋ Cancer.
At 00:29 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 8 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