Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 91% 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 leaving the last ∠1° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♑ Capricorn later.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 5 days on 21 July 2026 at 11:06.
Next Full Moon is the Buck Moon of July 2026 after 3 days on 29 July 2026 at 14:36.
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 6.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1889".
The Moon is 12 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 328 of Meeus index or 1281 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 7 hours and 53 minutes and it is 1 hour and 57 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 4 hours and 51 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 18 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 ∠18° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠36.5°.
1 day since point of apogee on 25 July 2026 at 16:45 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 14 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 10 August 2026 at 11:18 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 405 402 km (251 905 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 14 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 363 288 km (225 737 mi).
9 days after descending node on 17 July 2026 at 00:27 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 31 July 2026 at 11:54 in ♒ Aquarius.
At 03:56 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-28.067°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠28.107° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 8 August 2026 at 23:42.
22 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 3 days on 29 July 2026 at 14:36 in ♒ Aquarius 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