Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 86% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 11 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 leaving the last ∠2° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♌ Leo later.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 4 days on 27 February 2023 at 08:06.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2023 after 4 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 9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1935".
The Moon is 11 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 286 of Meeus index or 1239 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 17 minutes and it is 32 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. 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 27 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 42 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 ∠15.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠34.1°.
Moon is at apogee at 18:01 about 12 days since last perigee on 19 February 2023 at 09:06 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 16 days until point of next perigee on 19 March 2023 at 15:16 in ♒ Aquarius.
This apogee Moon is 405 890 km (252 208 mi) away from Earth. It is 482 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 819 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
6 days after ascending node on 24 February 2023 at 18:56 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 11 March 2023 at 08:53 in ♏ Scorpio.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 1 March 2023 at 14:09 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.716° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-27.831° at the point of next southern standstill on 15 March 2023 at 21:43 in ♐ Sagittarius.
6 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♈ Aries the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 4 days on 7 March 2023 at 12:40 in ♍ Virgo 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