Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 93% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 12 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 ∠4° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♓ Pisces later.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 4 days on 14 September 2040 at 02:07.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2040 after 2 days on 20 September 2040 at 17:43.
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 2.7% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1962" and ∠1910".
The Moon is 12 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 503 of Meeus index or 1456 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 12 minutes and it is 42 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 28 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 35 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 ∠226.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠261.6°.
Moon is at perigee at 06:43 about 15 days since last apogee on 2 September 2040 at 10:15 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next apogee on 30 September 2040 at 02:50 in ♋ Cancer.
This perigee Moon is 363 882 km (226 106 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 374 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 6 474 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
6 days after descending node on 12 September 2040 at 06:11 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 24 September 2040 at 23:04 in ♉ Taurus.
3 days since the last southern standstill on 15 September 2040 at 06:36 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.529° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠26.630° at the point of next northern standstill on 28 September 2040 at 10:20 in ♋ Cancer.
20 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 2 days on 20 September 2040 at 17:43 in ♓ Pisces 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