Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 73% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 9 days young.
The moon rises in the afternoon and sets after midnight to early morning. It is visible to the southeast in early evening and it is up for most of the night.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing first ∠1° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 2 days on 21 December 2020 at 23:41.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2020 after 5 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 9.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 9 days young and navigating from the first to the middle 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°.
Moon is at apogee at 16:32 about 11 days since last perigee on 12 December 2020 at 20:42 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 16 days until point of next perigee on 9 January 2021 at 15:39 in ♏ Scorpio.
This apogee Moon is 405 010 km (251 662 mi) away from Earth. It is 398 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 1 699 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
10 days after descending node on 14 December 2020 at 11:03 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 28 December 2020 at 15:03 in ♊ Gemini.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 15 December 2020 at 22:23 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-24.879° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠24.868° at the point of next northern standstill on 30 December 2020 at 07:53 in ♋ Cancer.
23 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 5 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