Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 83% 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 leaving the last ∠4° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♍ Virgo later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 4 days on 25 December 2015 at 11:11.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2016 after 25 days on 24 January 2016 at 01:46.
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% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1802" 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 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°.
8 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 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 2 January 2016 at 11:53 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 397 816 km (247 191 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 3 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 279 km (251 207 mi).
10 days after descending node on 18 December 2015 at 15:13 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 31 December 2015 at 20:19 in ♍ Virgo.
4 days since the last northern standstill on 25 December 2015 at 07:30 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.444° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.420° at the point of next southern standstill on 8 January 2016 at 17:56 in ♐ Sagittarius.
24 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 11 days on 10 January 2016 at 01:30 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