Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 4% 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 about ∠18° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 28 July 2024 at 02:51.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2024 after 17 days on 19 August 2024 at 18:26.
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 2.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1844" and ∠1891".
The Moon is 27 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
9 days since point of perigee on 24 July 2024 at 05:43 in ♓ Pisces the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 9 August 2024 at 01:32 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 388 602 km (241 466 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 6 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 298 km (251 841 mi).
7 days after ascending node on 26 July 2024 at 05:33 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 9 August 2024 at 01:06 in ♎ Libra.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 1 August 2024 at 05:59 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.455° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 13 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.546° at the point of next southern standstill on 15 August 2024 at 20:10 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 4 August 2024 at 11:13 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