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 leaving the last ∠4° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♑ Capricorn later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 25 December 2013 at 13:48.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2014 after 15 days on 16 January 2014 at 04:52.
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 0.6% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1962" 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 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°.
11 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 day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 1 January 2014 at 21:00 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 365 248 km (226 955 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 356 922 km (221 781 mi).
3 days after ascending node on 28 December 2013 at 00:21 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 9 January 2014 at 11:26 in ♉ Taurus.
At 04:49 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-19.537°. Over the upcoming 12 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠19.501° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 13 January 2014 at 08:14.
3 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 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