Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 98% 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 ∠2° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♏ Scorpio later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 31 March 2056 at 10:25.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2056 after 28 days on 29 April 2056 at 18:31.
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 2.7% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1919".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 695 of Meeus index or 1648 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 58 minutes and it is 42 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2056. 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 14 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 49 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 ∠147° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠172.8°.
Moon is at perigee at 03:57 about 12 days since last apogee on 19 March 2056 at 13:34 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 14 days until point of next apogee on 15 April 2056 at 19:35 in ♈ Aries.
This perigee Moon is 357 689 km (222 258 mi) away from Earth. It is 4 819 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 12 667 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
6 days after ascending node on 26 March 2056 at 07:57 in ♋ Cancer the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 7 April 2056 at 18:26 in ♑ Capricorn.
7 days since the last northern standstill on 25 March 2056 at 00:14 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.456° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-21.566° at the point of next southern standstill on 6 April 2056 at 13:41 in ♑ Capricorn.
6 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♋ Cancer the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 13 days on 14 April 2056 at 23:50 in ♈ Aries 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