Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 98% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 16 days old.
The moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It is visible to the southwest and it is high in the sky after midnight.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is leaving the last ∠2° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♋ Cancer later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 2 December 2009 at 07:30.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2009 after 28 days on 31 December 2009 at 19:13.
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 0.1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1949" and ∠1947".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 122 of Meeus index or 1075 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 48 minutes and it is 2 hours and 21 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 hours and 4 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 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 ∠99.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠135.6°.
10 days since point of apogee on 22 November 2009 at 20:07 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 4 December 2009 at 14:12 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 367 711 km (228 485 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 363 479 km (225 855 mi).
12 days after ascending node on 21 November 2009 at 11:34 in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 5 December 2009 at 03:18 in ♋ Cancer.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 2 December 2009 at 23:37 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠25.772° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-25.769° at the point of next southern standstill on 16 December 2009 at 02:38 in ♐ Sagittarius.
12 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 13 days on 16 December 2009 at 12:02 in ♐ Sagittarius 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