Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 97% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 13 days young.
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.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠23° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 5 days on 28 December 2014 at 18:31.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2015 after 1 day 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 6.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1836" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 13 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°).
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°.
9 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 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 9 January 2015 at 18:17 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 390 478 km (242 632 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 6 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 411 km (251 911 mi).
5 days after descending node on 29 December 2014 at 09:27 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 9 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 12 January 2015 at 15:33 in ♎ Libra.
At 17:53 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠18.650°. This is the year's northernmost lunar standstill of 2015. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-18.577° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 18 January 2015 at 06:17.
17 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♎ Libra the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day 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