Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 92% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 12 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 ∠13° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 5 days on 1 January 2012 at 06:15.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2012 after 2 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 8.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1793" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 12 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 148 of Meeus index or 1101 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 33 minutes and it is 1 hour and 22 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 49 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 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 ∠42.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠70.8°.
3 days since point of apogee on 2 January 2012 at 20:19 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 17 January 2012 at 21:28 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 399 837 km (248 447 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 11 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 883 km (229 835 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♊ Gemini at 14:30 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 19 January 2012 at 18:26 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 21:46 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠22.539°. This is the year's northernmost lunar standstill of 2012. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-22.492° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 20 January 2012 at 02:12.
14 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 2 days on 9 January 2012 at 07:30 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