Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 40% 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 leaving the last ∠3° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♌ Leo later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 1 day on 8 October 2031 at 10:50.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2031 after 20 days on 30 October 2031 at 07:33.
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 8.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1921".
The Moon is 23 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 392 of Meeus index or 1345 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 34 minutes and it is 45 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 50 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 13 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 ∠245.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠281.8°.
Moon is at apogee at 06:23 about 11 days since last perigee on 27 September 2031 at 07:09 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 13 days until point of next perigee on 22 October 2031 at 20:06 in ♑ Capricorn.
This apogee Moon is 404 365 km (251 261 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 043 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 344 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
5 days after descending node on 3 October 2031 at 22:04 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 18 October 2031 at 06:54 in ♏ Scorpio.
3 days since the last northern standstill on 6 October 2031 at 07:31 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.418° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠-20.359° at the point of next southern standstill on 20 October 2031 at 11:06 in ♐ Sagittarius.
18 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 16 October 2031 at 08:21 in ♎ Libra 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