Waning Crescent today: . The illuminated surface of the moon is 36% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 23 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 about ∠20° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 1 day on 22 December 2024 at 22:18.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2025 after 20 days on 13 January 2025 at 22:27.
There is low ocean tide today. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at big angle, so their combined tidal force is weak.
Lunar disc appears visually 9.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 23 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 308 of Meeus index or 1261 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 5 minutes and it is 1 hour and 56 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 3 hours and 21 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 42 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 ∠235.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠272.9°.
Moon is at apogee at 07:25 about 11 days since last perigee on 12 December 2024 at 13:18 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 14 days until point of next perigee on 7 January 2025 at 23:34 in ♈ Aries.
This apogee Moon is 404 486 km (251 336 mi) away from Earth. It is 922 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 223 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
1 day after descending node on 22 December 2024 at 23:21 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 5 January 2025 at 19:46 in ♓ Pisces.
8 days since the last northern standstill on 15 December 2024 at 20:12 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.428° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.428° at the point of next southern standstill on 30 December 2024 at 05:06 in ♑ Capricorn.
14 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♓ Pisces the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 30 December 2024 at 22:27 in ♑ Capricorn 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