Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 85% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 18 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 leaving the last ∠1° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♌ Leo later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 3 days on 30 November 2001 at 20:49.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2001 after 25 days on 30 December 2001 at 10:41.
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 0.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1945" and ∠1947".
The Moon is 18 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 23 of Meeus index or 976 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 7 minutes and it is 2 hours and 34 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 40 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 ∠53.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠86.2°.
10 days since point of apogee on 23 November 2001 at 15:46 in ♓ Pisces the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 6 December 2001 at 22:48 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 368 496 km (228 973 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 2 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 370 114 km (229 978 mi).
2 days after ascending node on 2 December 2001 at 05:30 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 15 December 2001 at 04:32 in ♐ Sagittarius.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 3 December 2001 at 06:54 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠24.246° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-24.250° at the point of next southern standstill on 16 December 2001 at 07:51 in ♑ Capricorn.
2 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 10 days on 14 December 2001 at 20:48 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