Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 69% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 20 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 ∠7° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 5 days on 17 October 2024 at 11:26.
Next Full Moon is the Beaver Moon of November 2024 after 24 days on 15 November 2024 at 21:29.
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 ∠1880" and ∠1929".
The Moon is 20 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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°.
5 days since point of perigee on 17 October 2024 at 00:46 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 29 October 2024 at 22:50 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 381 205 km (236 870 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 7 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 164 km (252 379 mi).
6 days after ascending node on 16 October 2024 at 07:05 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 29 October 2024 at 17:44 in ♎ Libra.
At 00:50 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠28.653°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-28.578° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 5 November 2024 at 17:18.
6 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 10 days on 1 November 2024 at 12:47 in ♏ Scorpio 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