Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 76% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 10 days young.
The moon rises in the afternoon and sets after midnight to early morning. It is visible to the southeast in early evening and it is up for most of the night.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠23° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 2 days on 11 December 2002 at 15:49.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2002 after 5 days on 19 December 2002 at 19:10.
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 9.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1949".
The Moon is 10 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 36 of Meeus index or 989 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 48 minutes and it is 1 hour and 38 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 4 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 59 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 ∠32.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠56.5°.
Moon is at apogee at 03:57 about 11 days since last perigee on 2 December 2002 at 08:53 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 15 days until point of next perigee on 30 December 2002 at 01:06 in ♏ Scorpio.
This apogee Moon is 404 912 km (251 601 mi) away from Earth. It is 496 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 1 797 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
10 days after descending node on 4 December 2002 at 02:12 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 18 December 2002 at 06:47 in ♊ Gemini.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 6 December 2002 at 07:00 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-25.808° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠25.790° at the point of next northern standstill on 20 December 2002 at 18:29 in ♋ Cancer.
23 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 5 days on 19 December 2002 at 19:10 in ♊ Gemini 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
