Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 90% 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 ∠2° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♍ Virgo later.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 4 days on 20 March 2040 at 17:59.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2040 after 3 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 6.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1801" and ∠1923".
The Moon is 11 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 497 of Meeus index or 1450 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 14 minutes and it is 1 hour and 14 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 30 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 39 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 ∠53.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠86°.
4 days since point of apogee on 21 March 2040 at 11:22 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 3 April 2040 at 20:39 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 397 992 km (247 301 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 9 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 913 km (229 853 mi).
6 days after ascending node on 18 March 2040 at 16:29 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 1 April 2040 at 17:18 in ♏ Scorpio.
3 days since the last northern standstill on 21 March 2040 at 12:03 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠25.893° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠-26.010° at the point of next southern standstill on 4 April 2040 at 04:16 in ♑ Capricorn.
6 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 3 days on 28 March 2040 at 15:11 in ♎ Libra 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