Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 97% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 13 days young.
The moon rises in the afternoon and sets after midnight to early morning. It is visible to the southeast in early evening and it is up for most of the night.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠14° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 6 days on 20 December 2012 at 05:19.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2012 after 1 day 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 9.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 13 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 160 of Meeus index or 1113 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 2 minutes and it is 34 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 1 hour and 42 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 27 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 ∠6.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠23.3°.
1 day since point of apogee on 25 December 2012 at 21:19 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 14 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 10 January 2013 at 10:26 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 405 476 km (251 951 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 14 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 360 048 km (223 723 mi).
1 day after descending node on 24 December 2012 at 22:27 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 7 January 2013 at 23:50 in ♏ Scorpio.
At 21:24 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠20.927°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-20.879° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 9 January 2013 at 15:22.
14 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 1 day on 28 December 2012 at 10:21 in ♋ Cancer 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