Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 81% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 10 days young.
The moon rises in the afternoon and sets after midnight to early morning. It is visible to the southeast in early evening and it is up for most of the night.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing first ∠4° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 2 days on 15 August 2021 at 15:20.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2021 after 4 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 3.2% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1958" and ∠1896".
The Moon is 10 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 267 of Meeus index or 1220 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 2 minutes and it is 48 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 1 hour and 42 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 27 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 ∠264.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠297.8°.
1 day since point of perigee on 17 August 2021 at 09:23 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 30 August 2021 at 02:22 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 365 993 km (227 418 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 11 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 100 km (251 096 mi).
1 day after descending node on 16 August 2021 at 16:04 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 30 August 2021 at 05:13 in ♊ Gemini.
At 22:24 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-25.761°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠25.868° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 2 September 2021 at 00:23.
15 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 4 days on 22 August 2021 at 12:02 in ♒ Aquarius 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