Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 39% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 23 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 leaving the last ∠1° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♊ Gemini later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 1 day on 8 August 2023 at 10:28.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2023 after 21 days on 31 August 2023 at 01:35.
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 1.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1859" and ∠1893".
The Moon is 23 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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 perigee on 2 August 2023 at 05:52 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 16 August 2023 at 11:55 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 385 496 km (239 536 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 6 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 635 km (252 671 mi).
2 days after ascending node on 7 August 2023 at 02:46 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 21 August 2023 at 16:23 in ♎ Libra.
10 days since the last southern standstill on 30 July 2023 at 11:13 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.924° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.981° at the point of next northern standstill on 12 August 2023 at 07:39 in ♋ Cancer.
2 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 6 days on 16 August 2023 at 09:38 in ♌ Leo 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