Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 97% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 16 days old.
The moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It is visible to the southwest and it is high in the sky after midnight.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is leaving the last ∠1° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♋ Cancer later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 28 November 2012 at 14:46.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2012 after 27 days on 28 December 2012 at 10:21.
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 9.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1774" and ∠1946".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 159 of Meeus index or 1112 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 34 minutes and it is 28 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 10 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 59 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 ∠351.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠6.8°.
1 day since point of apogee on 28 November 2012 at 19:35 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 12 December 2012 at 23:14 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 404 096 km (251 094 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 12 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 074 km (221 875 mi).
2 days after descending node on 27 November 2012 at 17:05 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 11 December 2012 at 15:57 in ♏ Scorpio.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 29 November 2012 at 14:33 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.924° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-20.926° at the point of next southern standstill on 13 December 2012 at 03:48 in ♐ Sagittarius.
16 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 12 days on 13 December 2012 at 08:42 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