Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 2% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 1 day young.
The moon rises in the morning and sets in the evening. It is visible toward the southwest in early evening.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠9° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 1 day on 15 September 2023 at 01:40.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2023 after 12 days on 29 September 2023 at 09:57.
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 6.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1793" and ∠1909".
The Moon is 1 day young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 293 of Meeus index or 1246 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 15 minutes and it is 43 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2023. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decrease with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at perigee (∠0° or ∠360°).
The length of the current synodic month is 3 hours and 31 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 32 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 ∠202.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠232.5°.
3 days since point of apogee on 12 September 2023 at 15:42 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 28 September 2023 at 01:05 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 399 830 km (248 443 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 11 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 359 911 km (223 638 mi).
13 days after ascending node on 3 September 2023 at 07:44 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 17 September 2023 at 19:18 in ♎ Libra.
7 days since the last northern standstill on 8 September 2023 at 13:18 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.168° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.254° at the point of next southern standstill on 23 September 2023 at 03:42 in ♑ Capricorn.
13 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 12 days on 29 September 2023 at 09:57 in ♈ Aries 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