Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 59% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 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 ∠12° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 7 days on 5 January 2015 at 04:53.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2015 after 22 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 8.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1788" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 21 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°.
2 days since point of apogee on 9 January 2015 at 18:17 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 21 January 2015 at 20:06 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 400 918 km (249 119 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 9 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 359 643 km (223 472 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♎ Libra at 15:33 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 12 days until Moon's next descending node later on 25 January 2015 at 10:23 in ♈ Aries.
8 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 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.577° at the point of next southern standstill on 18 January 2015 at 06:17 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 15:33 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 8 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