Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 88% 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 leaving the last ∠4° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♒ Aquarius later.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 3 days on 25 August 2031 at 18:40.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2031 after 2 days on 1 September 2031 at 09:20.
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 3.7% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1900".
The Moon is 11 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 391 of Meeus index or 1344 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 15 minutes and it is 41 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. 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 1 hour and 31 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 32 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 ∠213.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠245.2°.
14 days since point of apogee on 14 August 2031 at 21:37 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 30 August 2031 at 12:53 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 363 374 km (225 790 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 361 684 km (224 740 mi).
4 days after ascending node on 25 August 2031 at 01:21 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 6 September 2031 at 16:34 in ♉ Taurus.
2 days since the last southern standstill on 26 August 2031 at 23:55 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-20.731° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠20.623° at the point of next northern standstill on 8 September 2031 at 23:27 in ♊ Gemini.
4 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 2 days on 1 September 2031 at 09:20 in ♓ Pisces 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