Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 36% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 23 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 ∠13° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 1 day on 16 March 2031 at 06:36.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2031 after 21 days on 7 April 2031 at 17:21.
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 2.2% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1972" and ∠1928".
The Moon is 23 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 385 of Meeus index or 1338 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 1 minute and it is 1 hour and 8 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 44 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 25 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 ∠41.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠70.3°.
Moon is at perigee at 18:58 about 15 days since last apogee on 2 March 2031 at 18:57 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 13 days until point of next apogee on 30 March 2031 at 15:24 in ♊ Gemini.
This perigee Moon is 369 634 km (229 680 mi) away from Earth. It is 7 126 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 722 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
3 days after ascending node on 14 March 2031 at 11:38 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 27 March 2031 at 14:22 in ♉ Taurus.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 15 March 2031 at 19:06 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-21.353° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠21.242° at the point of next northern standstill on 29 March 2031 at 04:58 in ♊ Gemini.
3 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 5 days on 23 March 2031 at 03:49 in ♈ Aries 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