Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 92% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 17 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 ∠18° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 2 days on 2 January 2018 at 02:24.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2018 after 27 days on 31 January 2018 at 13:27.
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 0.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1948" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 17 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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 2018. 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°.
2 days since point of perigee on 1 January 2018 at 21:54 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 15 January 2018 at 02:10 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 367 927 km (228 619 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 10 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 461 km (252 563 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♌ Leo at 07:48 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 18 January 2018 at 14:28 in ♒ Aquarius.
2 days since the last northern standstill on 2 January 2018 at 00:01 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.055° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-20.048° at the point of next southern standstill on 15 January 2018 at 16:28 in ♑ Capricorn.
At 07:48 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 17 January 2018 at 02:17 in ♑ Capricorn 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