Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 3% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 27 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 first ∠1° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 6 days on 8 August 2023 at 10:28.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2023 after 16 days on 31 August 2023 at 01:35.
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 6.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1776" and ∠1894".
The Moon is 27 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°.
12 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 day until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 16 August 2023 at 11:55 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 403 658 km (250 821 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next day until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 635 km (252 671 mi).
7 days after ascending node on 7 August 2023 at 02:46 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 21 August 2023 at 16:23 in ♎ Libra.
2 days since the last northern standstill on 12 August 2023 at 07:39 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.981° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.095° at the point of next southern standstill on 26 August 2023 at 20:22 in ♐ Sagittarius.
7 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 1 day 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