Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 87% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 11 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 about ∠10° of ♓ Pisces tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 3 days on 10 October 2024 at 18:55.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2024 after 2 days on 17 October 2024 at 11:26.
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 1.8% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1958" and ∠1924".
The Moon is 11 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 306 of Meeus index or 1259 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 17 hours and 58 minutes and it is 24 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2024. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decrease with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at perigee (∠0° or ∠360°).
The length of the current synodic month is 5 hours and 14 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 49 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 ∠179.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠204.3°.
11 days since point of apogee on 2 October 2024 at 19:40 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 17 October 2024 at 00:46 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 366 020 km (227 434 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 2 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 173 km (221 937 mi).
12 days after descending node on 2 October 2024 at 11:52 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 16 October 2024 at 07:05 in ♈ Aries.
5 days since the last southern standstill on 9 October 2024 at 11:53 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.684° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.653° at the point of next northern standstill on 22 October 2024 at 00:50 in ♋ Cancer.
25 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♓ Pisces the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 2 days on 17 October 2024 at 11:26 in ♈ Aries 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