Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 97% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 16 days old.
The moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It is visible to the southwest and it is high in the sky after midnight.
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 ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♎ Libra later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 24 February 2024 at 12:30.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2024 after 27 days on 25 March 2024 at 07:00.
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 9.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1770" and ∠1938".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 298 of Meeus index or 1251 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 1 minute and it is 41 minutes longer 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 43 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 26 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 ∠345.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠1.4°.
1 day since point of apogee on 25 February 2024 at 15:00 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 10 March 2024 at 07:06 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 405 010 km (251 662 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 12 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 356 895 km (221 764 mi).
12 days after ascending node on 13 February 2024 at 17:01 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 27 February 2024 at 22:53 in ♎ Libra.
7 days since the last northern standstill on 19 February 2024 at 08:47 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.376° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.477° at the point of next southern standstill on 5 March 2024 at 02:03 in ♑ Capricorn.
12 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 10 March 2024 at 09:00 in ♓ Pisces 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