Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 2% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 28 days old.
The moon rises after midnight to early morning and sets in the afternoon. It is visible in the early morning low to the east.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠15° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 6 days on 13 January 2015 at 09:47.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2015 after 15 days on 3 February 2015 at 23:09.
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 0.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1935" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 28 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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 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 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 21 January 2015 at 20:06 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 370 420 km (230 168 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 2 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 359 643 km (223 472 mi).
6 days after ascending node on 12 January 2015 at 15:33 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 5 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 25 January 2015 at 10:23 in ♈ Aries.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 18 January 2015 at 06:17 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.577° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.513° at the point of next northern standstill on 31 January 2015 at 00:59 in ♋ Cancer.
6 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 1 day 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