Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 96% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 16 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 leaving the last ∠3° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♌ Leo later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 22 December 2018 at 17:49.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2019 after 27 days on 21 January 2019 at 05:16.
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 0.8% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1967" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 234 of Meeus index or 1187 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 18 hours and 8 minutes and it is 1 hour and 27 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 5 hours and 24 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 39 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 ∠116.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠149.4°.
Moon is at perigee at 09:52 about 11 days since last apogee on 12 December 2018 at 12:25 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 15 days until point of next apogee on 9 January 2019 at 04:29 in ♒ Aquarius.
This perigee Moon is 361 060 km (224 352 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 448 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 9 296 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
Moon is in ascending node in ♋ Cancer at 11:54 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next descending node later on 7 January 2019 at 00:08 in ♒ Aquarius.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 23 December 2018 at 11:48 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.550° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-21.553° at the point of next southern standstill on 5 January 2019 at 18:45 in ♑ Capricorn.
At 11:54 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 6 January 2019 at 01:28 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