Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 41% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 23 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 leaving the last ∠4° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♎ Libra later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 1 day on 6 December 2012 at 15:32.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2012 after 20 days on 28 December 2012 at 10:21.
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 2.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1901" and ∠1948".
The Moon is 23 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
8 days 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 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 12 December 2012 at 23:14 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 377 123 km (234 333 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 5 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 074 km (221 875 mi).
9 days after descending node on 27 November 2012 at 17:05 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 11 December 2012 at 15:57 in ♏ Scorpio.
7 days 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 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-20.926° at the point of next southern standstill on 13 December 2012 at 03:48 in ♐ Sagittarius.
23 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 5 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