Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 97% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 16 days old.
The moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It is visible to the southwest and it is high in the sky after midnight.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠24° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 24 December 2026 at 01:28.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2027 after 28 days on 22 January 2027 at 12:17.
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 1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1971" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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°.
1 day since point of perigee on 24 December 2026 at 08:30 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 7 January 2027 at 08:10 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 363 732 km (226 013 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 12 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 610 km (252 656 mi).
10 days after ascending node on 14 December 2026 at 13:04 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 27 December 2026 at 07:55 in ♌ Leo.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 23 December 2026 at 12:33 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.620° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-27.636° at the point of next southern standstill on 5 January 2027 at 20:46 in ♐ Sagittarius.
10 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 13 days on 7 January 2027 at 20:24 in ♑ Capricorn 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