Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 66% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 9 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 about ∠23° of ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 1 day on 25 July 2023 at 22:07.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2023 after 5 days on 1 August 2023 at 18:31.
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 0.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1873" and ∠1889".
The Moon is 9 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 291 of Meeus index or 1244 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 6 minutes and it is 56 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 22 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 41 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠155.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠179.2°.
7 days since point of apogee on 20 July 2023 at 06:56 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 2 August 2023 at 05:52 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 382 697 km (237 797 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 5 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 311 km (222 023 mi).
1 day after descending node on 25 July 2023 at 15:05 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 7 August 2023 at 02:46 in ♈ Aries.
11 days since the last northern standstill on 16 July 2023 at 02:40 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.849° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠-27.924° at the point of next southern standstill on 30 July 2023 at 11:13 in ♑ Capricorn.
16 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 5 days on 1 August 2023 at 18:31 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