Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 4% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 2 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 ∠23° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 2 days on 18 December 2017 at 06:31.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2018 after 12 days on 2 January 2018 at 02:24.
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 9.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1773" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 2 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 222 of Meeus index or 1175 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 47 minutes and it is 59 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2017. 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 7 hours and 3 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length and it is the longest synodic month length of 21st century.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠173.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠198.1°.
1 day since point of apogee on 19 December 2017 at 01:27 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 1 January 2018 at 21:54 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 404 378 km (251 269 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 12 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 356 566 km (221 560 mi).
12 days after ascending node on 8 December 2017 at 00:39 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 22 December 2017 at 10:04 in ♒ Aquarius.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 19 December 2017 at 09:31 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-20.062° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠20.055° at the point of next northern standstill on 2 January 2018 at 00:01 in ♋ Cancer.
12 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 12 days on 2 January 2018 at 02:24 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
