Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 81% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 10 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 ∠11° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 3 days on 18 January 2013 at 23:45.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2013 after 4 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 9.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1949".
The Moon is 10 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 161 of Meeus index or 1114 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 36 minutes and it is 55 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 8 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 1 minute 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 ∠23.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠44.2°.
Moon is at apogee at 10:52 about 12 days since last perigee on 10 January 2013 at 10:26 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 16 days until point of next perigee on 7 February 2013 at 12:09 in ♑ Capricorn.
This apogee Moon is 405 313 km (251 850 mi) away from Earth. It is 95 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 1 396 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
1 day after descending node on 21 January 2013 at 01:19 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 4 February 2013 at 02:14 in ♏ Scorpio.
12 days 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 day to face maximum declination of ∠20.816° at the point of next northern standstill on 23 January 2013 at 05:12 in ♊ Gemini.
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 4 days on 27 January 2013 at 04:38 in ♌ Leo 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