Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 98% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 16 days old.
The moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It is visible to the southwest and it is high in the sky after midnight.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠13° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 19 December 2021 at 04:36.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2022 after 28 days on 17 January 2022 at 23:49.
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 9.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1778" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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 apogee on 18 December 2021 at 02:16 in ♊ Gemini 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 1 January 2022 at 23:00 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 403 228 km (250 554 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 12 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 358 037 km (222 474 mi).
3 days after ascending node on 17 December 2021 at 00:12 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 31 December 2021 at 01:07 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 04:32 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠26.306°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-26.304° at the point of next southern standstill in ♑ Capricorn on 2 January 2022 at 13:35.
3 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 13 days on 2 January 2022 at 18:33 in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is going to be in a New Moon geocentric conjunction with the Sun and thus forming the next Sun-Moon-Earth 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