Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 97% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 13 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 about ∠18° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 6 days on 21 December 2020 at 23:41.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2020 after 1 day 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 8.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1793" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 13 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°.
3 days since point of apogee on 24 December 2020 at 16:32 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 9 January 2021 at 15:39 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 399 794 km (248 420 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 12 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 367 390 km (228 286 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♊ Gemini at 15:03 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 10 January 2021 at 20:15 in ♐ Sagittarius.
12 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 day to face maximum declination of ∠24.868° at the point of next northern standstill on 30 December 2020 at 07:53 in ♋ Cancer.
At 15:03 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 1 day 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