Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 2% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 1 day 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 ∠18° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 1 day on 23 December 2022 at 10:17.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2023 after 13 days on 6 January 2023 at 23:08.
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 1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1971" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 1 day young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 284 of Meeus index or 1237 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 36 minutes and it is 23 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2022. 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 2 hours and 8 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 1 minute 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 ∠344.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠360°.
Moon is at perigee at 08:32 about 12 days since last apogee on 12 December 2022 at 00:30 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 14 days until point of next apogee on 8 January 2023 at 09:19 in ♌ Leo.
This perigee Moon is 358 270 km (222 619 mi) away from Earth. It is 4 238 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 12 086 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
4 days after descending node on 20 December 2022 at 01:36 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 1 January 2023 at 15:25 in ♉ Taurus.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 23 December 2022 at 18:18 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.418° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.406° at the point of next northern standstill on 6 January 2023 at 03:08 in ♋ Cancer.
18 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 13 days on 6 January 2023 at 23:08 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