Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 72% 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 ∠7° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 5 days on 20 October 2021 at 14:57.
Next Full Moon is the Beaver Moon of November 2021 after 23 days on 19 November 2021 at 08:58.
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 8.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1778" and ∠1931".
The Moon is 20 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 269 of Meeus index or 1222 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 9 minutes and it is 19 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2021. 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 35 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 34 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 ∠323.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠342.3°.
1 day since point of apogee on 24 October 2021 at 15:30 in ♊ Gemini 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 5 November 2021 at 22:23 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 403 116 km (250 485 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 10 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 358 845 km (222 976 mi).
3 days after ascending node on 23 October 2021 at 11:47 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 6 November 2021 at 03:38 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 16:04 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠26.291°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-26.328° at the point of next southern standstill in ♑ Capricorn on 8 November 2021 at 16:27.
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 9 days on 4 November 2021 at 21:15 in ♏ Scorpio 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