Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 8% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 3 days 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 leaving the last ∠4° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♒ Aquarius later.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 2 days on 12 December 2023 at 23:32.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2023 after 11 days on 27 December 2023 at 00:33.
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 0.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1947" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 3 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 296 of Meeus index or 1249 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 25 minutes and it is 1 hour and 23 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 19 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 50 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 ∠303.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠328°.
10 days since point of apogee on 4 December 2023 at 18:42 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 16 December 2023 at 18:53 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 368 202 km (228 790 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 367 900 km (228 602 mi).
6 days after descending node on 8 December 2023 at 15:24 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 21 December 2023 at 13:54 in ♈ Aries.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 13 December 2023 at 21:51 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.151° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.131° at the point of next northern standstill on 26 December 2023 at 21:50 in ♊ Gemini.
21 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♈ Aries the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 11 days on 27 December 2023 at 00:33 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