Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 1% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 28 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 ∠9° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 6 December 2012 at 15:32.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2012 after 15 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 1.2% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1949".
The Moon is 28 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°.
Moon is at perigee at 23:14 about 14 days since last apogee on 28 November 2012 at 19:35 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 13 days until point of next apogee on 25 December 2012 at 21:19 in ♊ Gemini.
This perigee Moon is 357 074 km (221 875 mi) away from Earth. It is 5 434 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 13 282 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
1 day after ascending node on 11 December 2012 at 15:57 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 24 December 2012 at 22:27 in ♉ Taurus.
12 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 day to face maximum declination of ∠-20.926° at the point of next southern standstill on 13 December 2012 at 03:48 in ♐ Sagittarius.
1 day since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day 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