Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 1% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 28 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 ∠19° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 13 February 2023 at 16:01.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2023 after 16 days on 7 March 2023 at 12:40.
There is medium ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at very acute angle, so their combined tidal force is moderate.
Lunar disc appears visually 1.5% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1970" and ∠1941".
The Moon is 28 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 285 of Meeus index or 1238 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 13 minutes and it is 4 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2023. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
The length of the current synodic month is 2 hours and 31 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 38 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 ∠360° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠15.6°.
Moon is at perigee at 09:06 about 15 days since last apogee on 4 February 2023 at 08:55 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next apogee on 3 March 2023 at 18:01 in ♋ Cancer.
This perigee Moon is 358 267 km (222 617 mi) away from Earth. It is 4 241 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 12 089 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
7 days after descending node on 12 February 2023 at 07:31 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 5 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 24 February 2023 at 18:56 in ♈ Aries.
2 days since the last southern standstill on 16 February 2023 at 14:36 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.629° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.716° at the point of next northern standstill on 1 March 2023 at 14:09 in ♊ Gemini.
21 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 20 February 2023 at 07:06 in ♓ Pisces 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