Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 89% 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 passing about ∠5° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 3 days on 12 January 2017 at 11:34.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2017 after 26 days on 11 February 2017 at 00:33.
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 4.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1858" 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 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°.
5 days since point of perigee on 10 January 2017 at 06:07 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 22 January 2017 at 00:14 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 385 853 km (239 758 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 6 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 913 km (251 601 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♍ Virgo at 10:45 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next descending node later on 29 January 2017 at 22:21 in ♒ Aquarius.
4 days since the last northern standstill on 11 January 2017 at 09:32 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.932° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.900° at the point of next southern standstill on 25 January 2017 at 11:59 in ♑ Capricorn.
At 10:45 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 12 days on 28 January 2017 at 00:07 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