Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 98% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 16 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 about ∠7° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 12 December 2019 at 05:12.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2020 after 28 days on 10 January 2020 at 19:21.
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 3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1891" and ∠1949".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 246 of Meeus index or 1199 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 8 minutes and it is 2 hours and 21 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 1 hour and 23 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 39 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 ∠50.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠82.6°.
8 days since point of apogee on 5 December 2019 at 04:09 in ♓ Pisces the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 18 December 2019 at 20:30 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 378 964 km (235 477 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 5 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 370 260 km (230 069 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♋ Cancer at 14:15 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 26 December 2019 at 13:01 in ♑ Capricorn.
At 20:57 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠23.226°. This is the year's northernmost lunar standstill of 2019. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-23.227° at the point of next southern standstill in ♑ Capricorn on 26 December 2019 at 20:11.
At 14:15 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 12 days on 26 December 2019 at 05:13 in ♑ Capricorn 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
