Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 95% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 12 days young.
The moon rises in the afternoon and sets after midnight to early morning. It is visible to the southeast in early evening and it is up for most of the night.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing first ∠2° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 5 days on 13 July 2024 at 22:49.
Next Full Moon is the Buck Moon of July 2024 after 1 day on 21 July 2024 at 10:17.
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 0.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1871" and ∠1888".
The Moon is 12 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 303 of Meeus index or 1256 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 16 minutes and it is 2 hours and 27 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 28 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 41 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 ∠93.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠127.3°.
7 days since point of apogee on 12 July 2024 at 08:12 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 24 July 2024 at 05:43 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 383 062 km (238 024 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 4 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 364 914 km (226 747 mi).
6 days after descending node on 12 July 2024 at 22:27 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 26 July 2024 at 05:33 in ♈ Aries.
At 10:59 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-28.404°. Over the upcoming 12 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠28.455° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 1 August 2024 at 05:59.
20 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 1 day on 21 July 2024 at 10:17 in ♑ Capricorn 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