Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 4% 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 ∠19° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 28 December 2010 at 04:18.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2011 after 17 days on 19 January 2011 at 21:21.
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 4.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1873" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 27 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 135 of Meeus index or 1088 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 27 minutes and it is 2 hours and 1 minute 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 2 hours and 43 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 20 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 ∠67° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠103.5°.
7 days since point of perigee on 25 December 2010 at 12:24 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 10 January 2011 at 05:38 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 382 713 km (237 807 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 7 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 976 km (251 640 mi).
11 days after descending node on 21 December 2010 at 14:08 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 3 January 2011 at 12:48 in ♑ Capricorn.
At 10:06 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-24.242°. This is the year's southernmost lunar standstill of 2011. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠24.221° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 16 January 2011 at 22:51.
26 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 4 January 2011 at 09:03 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