Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 73% 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 passing about ∠6° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 5 days on 20 September 2021 at 23:55.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2021 after 24 days on 20 October 2021 at 14:57.
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 8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1914".
The Moon is 20 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 268 of Meeus index or 1221 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 14 minutes and it is 5 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 2 hours and 30 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 39 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 ∠297.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠323.3°.
Moon is at apogee at 21:44 about 15 days since last perigee on 11 September 2021 at 10:05 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next perigee on 8 October 2021 at 17:28 in ♏ Scorpio.
This apogee Moon is 404 641 km (251 432 mi) away from Earth. It is 767 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 068 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
Moon is in ascending node in ♊ Gemini at 07:33 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next descending node later on 9 October 2021 at 19:35 in ♏ Scorpio.
11 days since the last southern standstill on 15 September 2021 at 03:48 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-25.980° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠26.109° at the point of next northern standstill on 29 September 2021 at 08:26 in ♋ Cancer.
At 07:33 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 9 days on 6 October 2021 at 11:05 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