Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 91% 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 ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♒ Aquarius later.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 4 days on 18 August 2056 at 04:13.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2056 after 2 days on 25 August 2056 at 06:00.
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 0.5% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1908" and ∠1898".
The Moon is 12 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 700 of Meeus index or 1653 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 59 minutes and it is 46 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 2 hours and 45 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 24 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 ∠289.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠317.3°.
5 days since point of perigee on 16 August 2056 at 15:34 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 31 August 2056 at 14:03 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 375 764 km (233 489 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 9 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 515 km (251 354 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♑ Capricorn at 03:18 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 5 September 2056 at 11:57 in ♋ Cancer.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 21 August 2056 at 11:04 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-22.057° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 13 days to face maximum declination of ∠22.139° at the point of next northern standstill on 4 September 2056 at 19:42 in ♋ Cancer.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♋ Cancer the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 2 days on 25 August 2056 at 06:00 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