Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 87% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 11 days young.
The moon rises in the afternoon and sets after midnight to early morning. It is visible to the southeast in early evening and it is up for most of the night.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠19° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 3 days on 19 December 2023 at 18:39.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2023 after 3 days on 27 December 2023 at 00:33.
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 2.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1905" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 11 days young and navigating from the first to the middle 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°.
6 days since point of perigee on 16 December 2023 at 18:53 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 1 January 2024 at 15:28 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 376 330 km (233 841 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 9 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 911 km (251 600 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 21 December 2023 at 13:54 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 4 January 2024 at 18:52 in ♎ Libra.
9 days 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 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.131° at the point of next northern standstill on 26 December 2023 at 21:50 in ♊ Gemini.
1 day since the beginning of this draconic month in ♈ Aries the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 3 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