Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 3% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 27 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 ∠15° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 6 days on 18 January 2009 at 02:46.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2009 after 16 days on 9 February 2009 at 14:49.
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 9.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1770" and ∠1949".
The Moon is 27 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
1 day since point of apogee on 23 January 2009 at 00:11 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 14 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 7 February 2009 at 20:08 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 404 953 km (251 626 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 14 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 361 487 km (224 618 mi).
12 days after descending node on 12 January 2009 at 08:34 in ♌ Leo 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 26 January 2009 at 13:27 in ♒ Aquarius.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 22 January 2009 at 14:02 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.081° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.083° at the point of next northern standstill on 5 February 2009 at 14:55 in ♊ Gemini.
25 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 26 January 2009 at 07:55 in ♒ Aquarius 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