Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 61% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 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 ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♐ Sagittarius later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 6 days on 24 February 2024 at 12:30.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2024 after 22 days on 25 March 2024 at 07:00.
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 5.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1838" and ∠1935".
The Moon is 21 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°.
5 days 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 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 10 March 2024 at 07:06 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 389 945 km (242 301 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 7 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 356 895 km (221 764 mi).
3 days after descending node on 27 February 2024 at 22:53 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 9 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 12 March 2024 at 01:18 in ♈ Aries.
12 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 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.477° at the point of next southern standstill on 5 March 2024 at 02:03 in ♑ Capricorn.
17 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♈ Aries the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 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