Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 59% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 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 ∠5° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 6 days on 28 February 2040 at 00:59.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2040 after 23 days on 28 March 2040 at 15:11.
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 1.1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1956" and ∠1934".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 496 of Meeus index or 1449 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 22 minutes and it is 52 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 1 hour and 22 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 47 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 ∠30.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠53.5°.
11 days since point of apogee on 22 February 2040 at 15:18 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 9 March 2040 at 12:23 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 366 435 km (227 692 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 4 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 367 227 km (228 184 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♐ Sagittarius at 16:03 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 18 March 2040 at 16:29 in ♊ Gemini.
11 days since the last northern standstill on 23 February 2040 at 04:38 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠25.645° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠-25.776° at the point of next southern standstill on 7 March 2040 at 22:59 in ♑ Capricorn.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 13 March 2040 at 01:46 in ♓ Pisces 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