Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 37% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 6 days 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 passing about ∠20° of ♓ Pisces tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 5 days on 20 December 2006 at 14:01.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2007 after 8 days on 3 January 2007 at 13:57.
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 0.9% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1968" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 6 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 86 of Meeus index or 1039 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 1 minute and it is 1 hour and 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 1 hour and 16 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 47 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 ∠276.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠308.6°.
12 days since point of apogee on 13 December 2006 at 18:55 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 28 December 2006 at 01:48 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 364 191 km (226 298 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 370 321 km (230 107 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♓ Pisces at 10:36 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next descending node later on 8 January 2007 at 17:44 in ♍ Virgo.
5 days since the last southern standstill on 20 December 2006 at 13:40 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.378° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.396° at the point of next northern standstill on 2 January 2007 at 11:57 in ♊ Gemini.
At 10:36 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 8 days on 3 January 2007 at 13:57 in ♋ Cancer 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
