Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 26% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 5 days young.
The moon rises in the morning and sets in the evening. It is visible toward the southwest in early evening.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠9° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 5 days on 23 January 2012 at 07:39.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2012 after 10 days on 7 February 2012 at 21:54.
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 9.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1778" and ∠1948".
The Moon is 5 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 149 of Meeus index or 1102 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 55 minutes and it is 1 hour and 8 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 2 hours and 11 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 52 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 ∠70.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠107.8°.
10 days 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 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 30 January 2012 at 17:42 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 403 081 km (250 463 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 2 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 325 km (251 236 mi).
8 days after ascending node on 19 January 2012 at 18:26 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 5 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 2 February 2012 at 20:02 in ♊ Gemini.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 20 January 2012 at 02:12 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-22.492° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠22.404° at the point of next northern standstill on 3 February 2012 at 07:11 in ♊ Gemini.
8 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 10 days on 7 February 2012 at 21:54 in ♌ Leo 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