Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 95% 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 ∠21° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 5 days on 31 December 2030 at 13:36.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2031 after 2 days on 8 January 2031 at 18:26.
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 9.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" 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 383 of Meeus index or 1336 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 59 minutes and it is 19 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
The length of the current synodic month is 1 hour and 45 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 24 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 ∠5.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠21.6°.
Moon is at apogee at 11:00 about 13 days since last perigee on 24 December 2030 at 10:09 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 15 days until point of next perigee on 21 January 2031 at 21:41 in ♑ Capricorn.
This apogee Moon is 406 169 km (252 382 mi) away from Earth. It is 761 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 540 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
1 day after descending node on 5 January 2031 at 06:37 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 19 January 2031 at 08:51 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 05:22 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠21.889°. This is the year's northernmost lunar standstill of 2031. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-21.824° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 20 January 2031 at 05:10.
14 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 2 days on 8 January 2031 at 18:26 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