Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 93% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 12 days young.
Moonrise and moonset
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.
Moon phases on nearby dates
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Moon is passing about ∠10° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
4 days after First Quarter
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 4 days on 28 December 2014 at 18:31.
Wolf Moon after 2 days
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2015 after 2 days on 5 January 2015 at 04:53.
Moderate tide
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.
Apparent angular diameter ∠1858"
Lunar disc appears visually 4.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1858" and ∠1951".
Lunation 185 / 1138
The Moon is 12 days young and navigating from the first to the middle 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°).
Lunation length shorter than mean
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.
Lunar orbit details for
True anomaly ∠318°
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 before apogee
8 days since point of perigee on 24 December 2014 at 16:43 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 9 January 2015 at 18:17 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 385 853 km(239 758 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 7 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 411 km(251 911 mi).
Moon after descending node
4 days after descending node on 29 December 2014 at 09:27 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 12 January 2015 at 15:33 in ♎ Libra.
11 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 day to face maximum declination of ∠18.650° at the point of next northern standstill on 3 January 2015 at 17:53 in ♊ Gemini.
In 2 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.