Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 1% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 28 days old.
The moon rises after midnight to early morning and sets in the afternoon. It is visible in the early morning low to the east.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠24° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 7 days on 19 December 2008 at 10:29.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2009 after 15 days on 11 January 2009 at 03:27.
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 ∠1951".
The Moon is 28 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 110 of Meeus index or 1063 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 28 minutes and it is 5 minutes shorter 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 6 hours and 44 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 19 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 ∠161.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠186.6°.
Moon is at apogee at 17:50 about 13 days since last perigee on 12 December 2008 at 21:37 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 14 days until point of next perigee on 10 January 2009 at 10:52 in ♋ Cancer.
This apogee Moon is 406 602 km (252 651 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's farthest apogee of 2008. It is 1 194 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 107 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
10 days after descending node on 15 December 2008 at 23:02 in ♌ Leo 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 30 December 2008 at 07:40 in ♒ Aquarius.
At 08:03 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-27.026°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠27.060° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 9 January 2009 at 05:38.
23 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 27 December 2008 at 12:23 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