Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 71% 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 ∠19° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 5 days on 1 September 2031 at 09:20.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2031 after 24 days on 30 September 2031 at 18:58.
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 4.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1824" and ∠1904".
The Moon is 20 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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°.
6 days since point of perigee on 30 August 2031 at 12:53 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 11 September 2031 at 11:54 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 392 877 km (244 122 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 4 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 006 km (251 659 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♉ Taurus at 16:34 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 21 September 2031 at 02:24 in ♏ Scorpio.
10 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 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠20.623° at the point of next northern standstill on 8 September 2031 at 23:27 in ♊ Gemini.
12 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 10 days on 16 September 2031 at 18:47 in ♍ Virgo 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