Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 17% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 25 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 ∠10° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 3 days on 16 January 2012 at 09:08.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2012 after 19 days on 7 February 2012 at 21:54.
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 0.1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1953" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 25 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
1 day since point of perigee on 17 January 2012 at 21:28 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 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 30 January 2012 at 17:42 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 367 021 km (228 056 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 11 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 325 km (251 236 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♐ Sagittarius at 18:26 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 2 February 2012 at 20:02 in ♊ Gemini.
12 days since the last northern standstill on 6 January 2012 at 21:46 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠22.539° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-22.492° at the point of next southern standstill on 20 January 2012 at 02:12 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 18:26 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 3 days on 23 January 2012 at 07:39 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