Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 84% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 18 days old.
The moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It is visible to the southwest and it is high in the sky after midnight.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠6° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 4 days on 5 January 2015 at 04:53.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2015 after 25 days on 3 February 2015 at 23:09.
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 9.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 18 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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 apogee at 18:17 about 16 days since last perigee on 24 December 2014 at 16:43 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next perigee on 21 January 2015 at 20:06 in ♒ Aquarius.
This apogee Moon is 405 411 km (251 911 mi) away from Earth. It is 3 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 1 298 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
11 days after descending node on 29 December 2014 at 09:27 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 12 January 2015 at 15:33 in ♎ Libra.
5 days since the last northern standstill on 3 January 2015 at 17:53 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.650° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.577° at the point of next southern standstill on 18 January 2015 at 06:17 in ♐ Sagittarius.
23 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 11 days on 20 January 2015 at 13:14 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