Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 88% 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 passing about ∠23° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 3 days on 30 December 2001 at 10:41.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2002 after 26 days on 28 January 2002 at 22:50.
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 0.7% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1965" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 18 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 24 of Meeus index or 977 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 41 minutes and it is 1 hour and 31 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 3 hours and 57 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 6 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 ∠86.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠123.9°.
Moon is at perigee at 07:13 about 11 days since last apogee on 21 December 2001 at 13:02 in ♓ Pisces the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 15 days until point of next apogee on 18 January 2002 at 08:50 in ♓ Pisces.
This perigee Moon is 365 412 km (227 056 mi) away from Earth. It is 2 904 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 4 944 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
3 days after ascending node on 29 December 2001 at 14:51 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 11 January 2002 at 11:56 in ♐ Sagittarius.
2 days since the last northern standstill on 30 December 2001 at 15:40 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠24.244° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠-24.240° at the point of next southern standstill on 12 January 2002 at 15:26 in ♑ Capricorn.
3 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 11 days on 13 January 2002 at 13:29 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