Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 8% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 3 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 ∠12° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 2 days on 27 December 2008 at 12:23.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2009 after 11 days on 11 January 2009 at 03:27.
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 8.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1793" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 3 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 111 of Meeus index or 1064 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 33 minutes and it is 1 hour and 53 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2008. 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 6 hours and 49 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 14 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 ∠186.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠213.2°.
3 days since point of apogee on 26 December 2008 at 17:50 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 10 January 2009 at 10:52 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 399 688 km (248 355 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 10 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 501 km (222 141 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♒ Aquarius at 07:40 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 12 days until Moon's next descending node later on 12 January 2009 at 08:34 in ♌ Leo.
4 days since the last southern standstill on 26 December 2008 at 08:03 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.026° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.060° at the point of next northern standstill on 9 January 2009 at 05:38 in ♊ Gemini.
At 07:40 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 11 days on 11 January 2009 at 03:27 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
