Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 90% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 17 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 leaving the last ∠4° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♌ Leo later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 3 days on 8 December 2022 at 04:08.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2023 after 26 days on 6 January 2023 at 23:08.
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 9.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1949".
The Moon is 17 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 283 of Meeus index or 1236 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 20 minutes and it is 44 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decrease with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at perigee (∠0° or ∠360°).
The length of the current synodic month is 1 hour and 24 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 45 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 ∠325.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠344.3°.
15 days since point of perigee on 26 November 2022 at 01:30 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 12 December 2022 at 00:30 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 405 499 km (251 965 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next day until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 869 km (252 195 mi).
5 days after ascending node on 5 December 2022 at 12:39 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 20 December 2022 at 01:36 in ♏ Scorpio.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 9 December 2022 at 21:22 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.432° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-27.418° at the point of next southern standstill on 23 December 2022 at 18:18 in ♐ Sagittarius.
5 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 11 days on 23 December 2022 at 10:17 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