Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 3% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 27 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 leaving the last ∠2° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♑ Capricorn later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 6 days on 2 January 2016 at 05:30.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2016 after 15 days on 24 January 2016 at 01:46.
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 5.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1841" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 27 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
6 days since point of apogee on 2 January 2016 at 11:53 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 15 January 2016 at 02:10 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 389 414 km (241 971 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 6 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 619 km (229 671 mi).
7 days after ascending node on 31 December 2015 at 20:19 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 14 January 2016 at 15:48 in ♓ Pisces.
At 17:56 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-18.420°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠18.375° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 21 January 2016 at 16:41.
7 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♍ Virgo the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day 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