Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 7% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 2 days 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 ∠15° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 2 days on 4 December 2021 at 07:43.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2021 after 12 days on 19 December 2021 at 04:36.
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 0.6% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1960" and ∠1948".
The Moon is 2 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 271 of Meeus index or 1224 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 50 minutes and it is 23 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 1 hour and 54 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 15 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠358.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠13.9°.
2 days since point of perigee on 4 December 2021 at 10:01 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 18 December 2021 at 02:16 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 365 715 km (227 245 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 11 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 322 km (252 477 mi).
2 days after descending node on 3 December 2021 at 14:58 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 17 December 2021 at 00:12 in ♊ Gemini.
At 02:25 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-26.331°. This is the year's southernmost lunar standstill of 2021. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠26.306° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 20 December 2021 at 04:32.
16 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 12 days on 19 December 2021 at 04:36 in ♊ Gemini 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