Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 64% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 9 days young.
Moonrise and moonset
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.
Moon phases on nearby dates
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Moon is passing about ∠7° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
1 day after First Quarter
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 1 day on 11 December 2021 at 01:36.
Cold Moon after 6 days
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2021 after 6 days on 19 December 2021 at 04:36.
Moderate tide
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.
Apparent angular diameter ∠1833"
Lunar disc appears visually 6.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1833" and ∠1949".
Lunation 271 / 1224
The Moon is 9 days young and navigating from the first to the middle 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°).
Lunation length shorter than mean
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.
Lunar orbit details for
True anomaly ∠358.3°
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°.
Moon before apogee
8 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 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 18 December 2021 at 02:16 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 391 102 km(243 020 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 5 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 322 km(252 477 mi).
Moon before ascending node
8 days after descending node on 3 December 2021 at 14:58 in ♏ Scorpio 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 17 December 2021 at 00:12 in ♊ Gemini.
6 days since the last southern standstill on 6 December 2021 at 02:25 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.331° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠26.306° at the point of next northern standstill on 20 December 2021 at 04:32 in ♋ Cancer.
In 6 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.