Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 1% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 1 day 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 ∠11° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 1 day on 18 December 2017 at 06:31.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2018 after 13 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 9.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 1 day young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 222 of Meeus index or 1175 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 47 minutes and it is 59 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2017. 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 7 hours and 3 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length and it is the longest synodic month length of 21st century.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠173.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠198.1°.
Moon is at apogee at 01:27 about 14 days since last perigee on 4 December 2017 at 08:42 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 13 days until point of next perigee on 1 January 2018 at 21:54 in ♋ Cancer.
This apogee Moon is 406 605 km (252 653 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's farthest apogee of 2017. It is 1 197 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 104 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
11 days after ascending node on 8 December 2017 at 00:39 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 22 December 2017 at 10:04 in ♒ Aquarius.
At 09:31 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-20.062°. This is the year's southernmost lunar standstill of 2017. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠20.055° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 2 January 2018 at 00:01.
11 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 13 days on 2 January 2018 at 02:24 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