Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 23% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 5 days young.
The moon rises in the morning and sets in the evening. It is visible toward the southwest in early evening.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠21° of ♓ Pisces tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 4 days on 10 January 2016 at 01:30.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2016 after 9 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 0.6% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1963" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 5 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 198 of Meeus index or 1151 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 8 minutes and it is 1 hour and 52 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 24 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 39 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 ∠292.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠319.8°.
12 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 day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 15 January 2016 at 02:10 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 365 092 km (226 858 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 619 km (229 671 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♓ Pisces at 15:48 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 27 January 2016 at 23:58 in ♍ Virgo.
5 days since the last southern standstill on 8 January 2016 at 17:56 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.420° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.375° at the point of next northern standstill on 21 January 2016 at 16:41 in ♊ Gemini.
13 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 9 days on 24 January 2016 at 01:46 in ♌ Leo 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