Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 65% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 20 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 passing about ∠22° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 6 days on 24 January 2016 at 01:46.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2016 after 23 days on 22 February 2016 at 18:20.
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 9.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1948".
The Moon is 20 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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°.
Moon is at apogee at 09:10 about 15 days since last perigee on 15 January 2016 at 02:10 in ♓ Pisces the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next perigee on 11 February 2016 at 02:42 in ♓ Pisces.
This apogee Moon is 404 553 km (251 378 mi) away from Earth. It is 855 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 156 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
2 days after ascending node on 27 January 2016 at 23:58 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 10 February 2016 at 20:46 in ♓ Pisces.
8 days since the last northern standstill on 21 January 2016 at 16:41 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.375° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.303° at the point of next southern standstill on 5 February 2016 at 04:34 in ♑ Capricorn.
2 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 9 days on 8 February 2016 at 14:39 in ♒ Aquarius 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