Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 89% 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 ∠12° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 3 days on 8 December 2024 at 15:27.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2024 after 2 days on 15 December 2024 at 09:02.
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 0.7% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1964" and ∠1949".
The Moon is 11 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 308 of Meeus index or 1261 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 5 minutes and it is 1 hour and 56 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 3 hours and 21 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 42 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠235.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠272.9°.
Moon is at perigee at 13:18 about 16 days since last apogee on 26 November 2024 at 11:56 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next apogee on 24 December 2024 at 07:25 in ♎ Libra.
This perigee Moon is 365 360 km (227 024 mi) away from Earth. It is 2 852 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 4 996 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
2 days after ascending node on 9 December 2024 at 19:36 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 22 December 2024 at 23:21 in ♍ Virgo.
9 days since the last southern standstill on 2 December 2024 at 22:31 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.452° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.428° at the point of next northern standstill on 15 December 2024 at 20:12 in ♊ Gemini.
2 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♓ Pisces the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 2 days on 15 December 2024 at 09:02 in ♊ Gemini 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