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 passing first ∠4° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 2 March 2056 at 00:40.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2056 after 27 days on 31 March 2056 at 10:25.
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 1.4% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1963" and ∠1935".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 694 of Meeus index or 1647 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 53 minutes and it is 5 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 4 hours and 9 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 54 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 ∠113.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠147°.
Moon is at perigee at 19:44 about 11 days since last apogee on 20 February 2056 at 22:27 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 16 days until point of next apogee on 19 March 2056 at 13:34 in ♈ Aries.
This perigee Moon is 361 481 km (224 614 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 027 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 8 875 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
4 days after ascending node on 28 February 2056 at 01:59 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 11 March 2056 at 17:34 in ♑ Capricorn.
5 days since the last northern standstill on 26 February 2056 at 15:50 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.253° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠-21.325° at the point of next southern standstill on 10 March 2056 at 07:45 in ♑ Capricorn.
4 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 12 days on 16 March 2056 at 06:52 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
