Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 96% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 13 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 ∠8° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 5 days on 17 December 2026 at 05:43.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2026 after 1 day on 24 December 2026 at 01:28.
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 0.3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1958" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 13 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 333 of Meeus index or 1286 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 33 minutes and it is 1 minute longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2026. 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 48 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 14 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 ∠159.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠184.3°.
11 days since point of apogee on 11 December 2026 at 06:46 in ♑ Capricorn 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 24 December 2026 at 08:30 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 366 164 km (227 524 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 356 650 km (221 612 mi).
7 days after ascending node on 14 December 2026 at 13:04 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 27 December 2026 at 07:55 in ♌ Leo.
12 days since the last southern standstill on 9 December 2026 at 15:27 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.602° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠27.620° at the point of next northern standstill on 23 December 2026 at 12:33 in ♊ Gemini.
7 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 24 December 2026 at 01:28 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