Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 2% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 1 day young.
The moon rises in the morning and sets in the evening. It is visible toward the southwest in early evening.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is leaving the last ∠1° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♑ Capricorn later.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 1 day on 4 December 2002 at 07:34.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2002 after 14 days on 19 December 2002 at 19:10.
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 1.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1911" and ∠1947".
The Moon is 1 day young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 36 of Meeus index or 989 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 48 minutes and it is 1 hour and 38 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. 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 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 59 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 ∠32.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠56.5°.
3 days since point of perigee on 2 December 2002 at 08:53 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 14 December 2002 at 03:57 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 374 993 km (233 010 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 8 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 912 km (251 601 mi).
1 day after descending node on 4 December 2002 at 02:12 in ♐ Sagittarius 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 18 December 2002 at 06:47 in ♊ Gemini.
11 days since the last northern standstill on 23 November 2002 at 12:14 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠25.812° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-25.808° at the point of next southern standstill on 6 December 2002 at 07:00 in ♑ Capricorn.
14 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 14 days on 19 December 2002 at 19:10 in ♊ Gemini 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
