Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 19% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 4 days young.
The moon rises in the morning and sets in the evening. It is visible toward the southwest in early evening.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is leaving the last ∠2° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♊ Gemini later.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 4 days on 23 March 2031 at 03:49.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2031 after 11 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 7.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1788" and ∠1923".
The Moon is 4 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 386 of Meeus index or 1339 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 8 minutes and it is 1 hour and 12 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 24 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 39 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 ∠70.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠106.4°.
9 days since point of perigee on 17 March 2031 at 18:58 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 30 March 2031 at 15:24 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 400 836 km (249 068 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 3 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 227 km (251 175 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♉ Taurus at 14:22 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 10 April 2031 at 14:56 in ♏ Scorpio.
11 days 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 day to face maximum declination of ∠21.242° at the point of next northern standstill on 29 March 2031 at 04:58 in ♊ Gemini.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 11 days on 7 April 2031 at 17:21 in ♎ Libra 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