Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 36% 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 passing first ∠3° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 1 day on 6 March 2040 at 07:19.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2040 after 21 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 2% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1933".
The Moon is 23 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
13 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 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 9 March 2040 at 12:23 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 363 369 km (225 787 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 2 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 367 227 km (228 184 mi).
1 day after descending node on 5 March 2040 at 16:03 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 18 March 2040 at 16:29 in ♊ Gemini.
At 22:59 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-25.776°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠25.893° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 21 March 2040 at 12:03.
15 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 5 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