Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 8% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 3 days young.
The moon rises in the morning and sets in the evening. It is visible toward the southwest in early evening.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠6° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 2 days on 22 December 2014 at 01:36.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2015 after 11 days on 5 January 2015 at 04:53.
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 0.5% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1961" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 3 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 185 of Meeus index or 1138 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 38 minutes and it is 1 hour and 4 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 1 hour and 6 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 3 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 ∠318° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠338.3°.
Moon is at perigee at 16:43 about 11 days since last apogee on 12 December 2014 at 23:02 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 16 days until point of next apogee on 9 January 2015 at 18:17 in ♍ Virgo.
This perigee Moon is 364 791 km (226 671 mi) away from Earth. It is 2 283 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 5 565 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
7 days after ascending node on 16 December 2014 at 13:27 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 29 December 2014 at 09:27 in ♈ Aries.
2 days since the last southern standstill on 21 December 2014 at 18:25 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.665° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.650° at the point of next northern standstill on 3 January 2015 at 17:53 in ♊ Gemini.
7 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 11 days on 5 January 2015 at 04:53 in ♋ Cancer 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