Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 99% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 15 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 ∠24° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 3 December 2017 at 15:47.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2018 after 28 days on 2 January 2018 at 02:24.
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 1.3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1972" and ∠1947".
The Moon is 15 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 221 of Meeus index or 1174 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 18 hours and 48 minutes and it is 59 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
The length of the current synodic month is 6 hours and 4 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 59 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 ∠147° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠173.3°.
Moon is at perigee at 08:42 about 12 days since last apogee on 21 November 2017 at 18:52 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 14 days until point of next apogee on 19 December 2017 at 01:27 in ♑ Capricorn.
This perigee Moon is 357 496 km (222 138 mi) away from Earth. It is 5 012 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 12 860 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
9 days after descending node on 25 November 2017 at 08:22 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 8 December 2017 at 00:39 in ♌ Leo.
12 days since the last southern standstill on 22 November 2017 at 02:06 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-19.959° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠20.015° at the point of next northern standstill on 5 December 2017 at 11:43 in ♋ Cancer.
23 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 13 days on 18 December 2017 at 06:31 in ♐ Sagittarius 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