Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 4% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 27 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 ∠20° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 31 July 2021 at 13:16.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2021 after 16 days on 22 August 2021 at 12:02.
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 4.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1802" and ∠1892".
The Moon is 27 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 266 of Meeus index or 1219 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 34 minutes and it is 1 hour and 32 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 11 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 59 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 ∠230.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠264.3°.
4 days since point of apogee on 2 August 2021 at 07:35 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 17 August 2021 at 09:23 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 397 811 km (247 188 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 10 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 127 km (229 365 mi).
3 days after ascending node on 3 August 2021 at 02:51 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 16 August 2021 at 16:04 in ♐ Sagittarius.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 5 August 2021 at 16:46 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠25.685° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-25.761° at the point of next southern standstill on 18 August 2021 at 22:24 in ♑ Capricorn.
3 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 2 days on 8 August 2021 at 13:50 in ♌ Leo 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