Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 15% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 4 days young.
The moon rises in the morning and sets in the evening. It is visible toward the southwest in early evening.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing first ∠0° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 3 days on 31 December 2005 at 03:12.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2006 after 10 days on 14 January 2006 at 09:48.
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 1.1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 4 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 74 of Meeus index or 1027 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 3 minutes and it is 47 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decrease with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at perigee (∠0° or ∠360°).
The length of the current synodic month is 1 hour and 41 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 28 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠329.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠347.5°.
1 day since point of perigee on 1 January 2006 at 22:50 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 14 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 17 January 2006 at 19:07 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 363 300 km (225 744 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 14 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 886 km (252 206 mi).
10 days after descending node on 24 December 2005 at 10:43 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 6 January 2006 at 05:01 in ♈ Aries.
3 days since the last southern standstill on 30 December 2005 at 13:57 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.387° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.410° at the point of next northern standstill on 12 January 2006 at 13:12 in ♊ Gemini.
24 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♈ Aries the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 10 days on 14 January 2006 at 09:48 in ♋ Cancer 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