Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 3% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 27 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 about ∠8° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 14 December 2014 at 12:51.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2015 after 15 days on 5 January 2015 at 04:53.
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 3.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1881" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 27 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 184 of Meeus index or 1137 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 4 minutes and it is 1 hour and 26 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. 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 20 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 43 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠289.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠318°.
7 days since point of apogee on 12 December 2014 at 23:02 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 24 December 2014 at 16:43 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 380 975 km (236 727 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 4 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 364 791 km (226 671 mi).
3 days after ascending node on 16 December 2014 at 13:27 in ♎ Libra 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 29 December 2014 at 09:27 in ♈ Aries.
13 days since the last northern standstill on 7 December 2014 at 09:06 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.660° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-18.665° at the point of next southern standstill on 21 December 2014 at 18:25 in ♐ Sagittarius.
3 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♎ Libra the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 22 December 2014 at 01:36 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