Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 2% 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 ∠14° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 18 December 2011 at 00:48.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2012 after 16 days on 9 January 2012 at 07:30.
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 0.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1944" 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 147 of Meeus index or 1100 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 57 minutes and it is 1 hour and 36 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 47 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 22 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠21.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠42.1°.
1 day since point of perigee on 22 December 2011 at 02:56 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 2 January 2012 at 20:19 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 368 715 km (229 109 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 10 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 580 km (251 394 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♐ Sagittarius at 11:36 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next descending node later on 6 January 2012 at 14:30 in ♊ Gemini.
At 17:25 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-22.554°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠22.539° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 6 January 2012 at 21:46.
At 11:36 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 1 day on 24 December 2011 at 18:06 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