Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 89% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 18 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 passing about ∠8° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 2 days on 19 August 2024 at 18:26.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2024 after 26 days on 18 September 2024 at 02:34.
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 3.9% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1898".
The Moon is 18 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 304 of Meeus index or 1257 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 43 minutes and it is 2 hours and 11 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 1 hour and 58 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 4 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 ∠127.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠155.7°.
1 day since point of perigee on 21 August 2024 at 05:05 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 14 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 5 September 2024 at 14:55 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 363 306 km (225 748 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 14 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 215 km (252 410 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♈ Aries at 10:27 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next descending node later on 5 September 2024 at 05:43 in ♎ Libra.
6 days since the last southern standstill on 15 August 2024 at 20:10 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.546° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.606° at the point of next northern standstill on 28 August 2024 at 11:09 in ♋ Cancer.
At 10:27 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 11 days on 3 September 2024 at 01:55 in ♍ Virgo 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