Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 97% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 16 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 leaving the last ∠4° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♎ Libra later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 20 February 2046 at 23:44.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2046 after 27 days on 22 March 2046 at 09:27.
There is medium ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at very acute angle, so their combined tidal force is moderate.
Lunar disc appears visually 1.6% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1970" and ∠1939".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 570 of Meeus index or 1523 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 6 minutes and it is 1 hour and 30 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2046. 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 6 hours and 22 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 41 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 ∠159.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠184.1°.
1 day since point of perigee on 21 February 2046 at 06:43 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 7 March 2046 at 06:49 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 363 847 km (226 084 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 12 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 576 km (252 635 mi).
2 days after descending node on 19 February 2046 at 17:48 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 4 March 2046 at 21:25 in ♒ Aquarius.
6 days since the last northern standstill on 16 February 2046 at 04:45 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.295° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠-27.260° at the point of next southern standstill on 28 February 2046 at 17:20 in ♐ Sagittarius.
16 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 13 days on 7 March 2046 at 18:15 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