Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 94% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 12 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 ∠23° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 4 days on 5 January 2017 at 19:47.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2017 after 1 day on 12 January 2017 at 11:34.
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 0.5% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1961" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 12 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 210 of Meeus index or 1163 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 17 hours and 14 minutes and it is 2 hours and 23 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 4 hours and 30 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 33 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 ∠223.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠259.5°.
Moon is at perigee at 06:07 about 16 days since last apogee on 25 December 2016 at 05:55 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next apogee on 22 January 2017 at 00:14 in ♐ Sagittarius.
This perigee Moon is 363 242 km (225 708 mi) away from Earth. It is 734 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 7 114 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
7 days after descending node on 2 January 2017 at 18:14 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 15 January 2017 at 10:45 in ♍ Virgo.
12 days since the last southern standstill on 29 December 2016 at 03:30 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.958° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠18.932° at the point of next northern standstill on 11 January 2017 at 09:32 in ♋ Cancer.
22 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 12 January 2017 at 11:34 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