Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 72% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 9 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 ∠12° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 2 days on 4 January 2009 at 11:56.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2009 after 4 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 0.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1940" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 9 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 111 of Meeus index or 1064 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 33 minutes and it is 1 hour and 53 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2009. 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 49 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 14 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 ∠186.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠213.2°.
10 days since point of apogee on 26 December 2008 at 17:50 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 10 January 2009 at 10:52 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 369 559 km (229 633 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 3 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 501 km (222 141 mi).
7 days after ascending node on 30 December 2008 at 07:40 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 5 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 12 January 2009 at 08:34 in ♌ Leo.
11 days since the last southern standstill on 26 December 2008 at 08:03 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.026° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.060° at the point of next northern standstill on 9 January 2009 at 05:38 in ♊ Gemini.
7 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 4 days on 11 January 2009 at 03:27 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