Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 77% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 19 days old.
The moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It is visible to the southwest and it is high in the sky after midnight.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing first ∠2° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 4 days on 23 November 2018 at 05:39.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2018 after 25 days on 22 December 2018 at 17:49.
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 1.3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1971" and ∠1945".
The Moon is 19 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 233 of Meeus index or 1186 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 18 minutes and it is 2 hours and 50 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 2 hours and 34 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 29 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 ∠79.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠116.6°.
1 day since point of perigee on 26 November 2018 at 12:10 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 15 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 12 December 2018 at 12:25 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 363 642 km (225 957 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 15 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 177 km (251 765 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♋ Cancer at 05:18 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 10 December 2018 at 17:57 in ♑ Capricorn.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 26 November 2018 at 01:48 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.485° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-21.539° at the point of next southern standstill on 9 December 2018 at 11:12 in ♑ Capricorn.
At 05:18 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 9 days on 7 December 2018 at 07:20 in ♐ Sagittarius 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
