Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 2% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 28 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 passing about ∠10° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 6 days on 11 December 2025 at 20:52.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2026 after 15 days on 3 January 2026 at 10:03.
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 9.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1769" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 28 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 320 of Meeus index or 1273 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 18 hours and 56 minutes and it is 47 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2025. 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 6 hours and 12 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 51 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 ∠181.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠207°.
1 day since point of apogee on 17 December 2025 at 06:09 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 14 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 1 January 2026 at 21:43 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 405 141 km (251 743 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 14 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 360 348 km (223 910 mi).
7 days after descending node on 11 December 2025 at 07:35 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 25 December 2025 at 22:03 in ♓ Pisces.
12 days since the last northern standstill on 5 December 2025 at 21:51 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.263° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-28.233° at the point of next southern standstill on 19 December 2025 at 23:18 in ♐ Sagittarius.
19 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♓ Pisces the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 20 December 2025 at 01:43 in ♐ Sagittarius 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