Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 8% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 26 days old.
The moon rises after midnight to early morning and sets in the afternoon. It is visible in the early morning low to the east.
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 ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♑ Capricorn later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 4 days on 15 January 2023 at 02:10.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2023 after 17 days on 5 February 2023 at 18:29.
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 0.2% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1955" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 26 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
11 days since point of apogee on 8 January 2023 at 09:19 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 21 January 2023 at 20:58 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 366 728 km (227 874 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 2 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 356 570 km (221 562 mi).
3 days after descending node on 16 January 2023 at 06:32 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 9 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 28 January 2023 at 16:05 in ♉ Taurus.
13 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 day to face maximum declination of ∠-27.461° at the point of next southern standstill on 20 January 2023 at 05:06 in ♑ Capricorn.
17 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 2 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