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 ∠5° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 6 January 2023 at 23:08.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2023 after 28 days on 5 February 2023 at 18:29.
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 9.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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 2023. 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 apogee at 09:19 about 15 days since last perigee on 24 December 2022 at 08:32 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 13 days until point of next perigee on 21 January 2023 at 20:58 in ♑ Capricorn.
This apogee Moon is 406 459 km (252 562 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 051 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 250 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
6 days after ascending node on 1 January 2023 at 15:25 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 16 January 2023 at 06:32 in ♏ Scorpio.
2 days since the last northern standstill on 6 January 2023 at 03:08 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.406° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-27.461° at the point of next southern standstill on 20 January 2023 at 05:06 in ♑ Capricorn.
6 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 13 days on 21 January 2023 at 20:53 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