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 ∠5° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 1 day on 14 December 2020 at 16:17.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2020 after 14 days on 30 December 2020 at 03:28.
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 1.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1923" 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 259 of Meeus index or 1212 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 44 minutes and it is 1 hour and 21 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 equal to the mean synodic month length. It is %hours_to_shortest% and %minutes_to_shortest% longer than the 21st century's shortest and %hours_to_longest% and %minutes_to_longest% shorter than the 21st century's longest synodic months.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠30.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠53.8°.
2 days since point of perigee on 12 December 2020 at 20:42 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 24 December 2020 at 16:32 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 372 648 km (231 553 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 9 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 010 km (251 662 mi).
1 day after descending node on 14 December 2020 at 11:03 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 13 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 28 December 2020 at 15:03 in ♊ Gemini.
At 22:23 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-24.879°. This is the year's southernmost lunar standstill of 2020. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠24.868° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 30 December 2020 at 07:53.
14 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 14 days on 30 December 2020 at 03:28 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