Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 70% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 20 days old.
The moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It is visible to the southwest and it is high in the sky after midnight.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠8° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 6 days on 17 December 2013 at 09:28.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2014 after 23 days on 16 January 2014 at 04:52.
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 8.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1799" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 20 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 172 of Meeus index or 1125 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 52 minutes and it is 28 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2013. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decrease with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at perigee (∠0° or ∠360°).
The length of the current synodic month is 1 hour and 52 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 17 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 ∠336.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠353°.
3 days since point of apogee on 19 December 2013 at 23:49 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 1 January 2014 at 21:00 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 398 518 km (247 628 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 9 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 356 922 km (221 781 mi).
10 days after descending node on 13 December 2013 at 10:10 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 28 December 2013 at 00:21 in ♏ Scorpio.
6 days since the last northern standstill on 17 December 2013 at 01:00 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠19.570° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠-19.537° at the point of next southern standstill on 31 December 2013 at 04:49 in ♐ Sagittarius.
22 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 8 days on 1 January 2014 at 11:14 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