Tonight · 8 October 2026
Waning Crescent
The moon is 5% illuminated and waning, 27.4 days into its cycle. It sits 380,064 km from Earth, in Virgo.
- Illumination
- 5.3%
- Age
- 27.4 d
- Distance
- 380,064 km
- Constellation
- Virgo
Libration +2.3° lat · +4.8° lon · apparent diameter 31.4′
The next four phases
Next full moon
Hunter's Moon
26 October 2026 at 04:12 UTC
in 18 days — at a distance of 368,859 km.
How the phases work
The moon makes no light of its own. Half of it is always lit by the sun, and what changes through the month is how much of that lit half we can see from Earth. The cycle from one new moon to the next — a synodic month — takes 29 days, 12 hours and 44 minutes on average.
The moon also spins once on its axis in exactly the time it takes to orbit us, so it keeps the same face turned toward Earth. That face is not perfectly fixed: the orbit is elliptical and tilted, which makes the moon appear to rock slightly north and south, east and west. This is called libration, and over time it lets us see about 59% of the surface rather than 50%. The disc at the top of this page has the current libration applied, so the features really do shift from month to month.
Every figure on this site is computed from astronomical ephemerides rather than looked up in a table, which means you can ask for any date — past or future — and get a real answer.
Try the calculator for any date and location, or browse the full moon calendar and the traditional moon names.