Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 2% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 28 days old.
The moon rises after midnight to early morning and sets in the afternoon. It is visible in the early morning low to the east.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing first ∠0° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 6 days on 2 September 2056 at 05:43.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2056 after 15 days on 23 September 2056 at 19:34.
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 0.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1890" and ∠1905".
The Moon is 28 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
7 days since point of apogee on 31 August 2056 at 14:03 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 12 September 2056 at 10:34 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 379 221 km (235 637 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 3 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 364 705 km (226 617 mi).
3 days after ascending node on 5 September 2056 at 11:57 in ♋ Cancer the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 9 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 18 September 2056 at 05:52 in ♑ Capricorn.
3 days since the last northern standstill on 4 September 2056 at 19:42 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠22.139° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠-22.234° at the point of next southern standstill on 17 September 2056 at 16:12 in ♑ Capricorn.
3 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 1 day on 9 September 2056 at 17:47 in ♍ Virgo 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