Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 99% 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 ∠20° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 5 days on 18 December 2015 at 15:14.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2015 after 1 day on 25 December 2015 at 11:11.
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 2.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1911" 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 197 of Meeus index or 1150 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 1 minute and it is 1 hour and 53 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 2 hours and 17 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 46 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠255.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠292.2°.
3 days since point of perigee on 21 December 2015 at 08:53 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 2 January 2016 at 11:53 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 375 061 km (233 052 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 8 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 279 km (251 207 mi).
5 days after descending node on 18 December 2015 at 15:13 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 31 December 2015 at 20:19 in ♍ Virgo.
12 days since the last southern standstill on 12 December 2015 at 08:15 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.438° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠18.444° at the point of next northern standstill on 25 December 2015 at 07:30 in ♋ Cancer.
19 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♍ Virgo the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 25 December 2015 at 11:11 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