Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 3% 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 first ∠2° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 5 January 2013 at 03:58.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2013 after 16 days on 27 January 2013 at 04:38.
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 0.8% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1967" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 28 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
Moon is at perigee at 10:26 about 15 days since last apogee on 25 December 2012 at 21:19 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next apogee on 22 January 2013 at 10:52 in ♊ Gemini.
This perigee Moon is 360 048 km (223 723 mi) away from Earth. It is 2 460 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 10 308 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
2 days after ascending node on 7 January 2013 at 23:50 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 21 January 2013 at 01:19 in ♉ Taurus.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 9 January 2013 at 15:22 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-20.879° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠20.816° at the point of next northern standstill on 23 January 2013 at 05:12 in ♊ Gemini.
2 days 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 11 January 2013 at 19:44 in ♑ Capricorn 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