Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 1% 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 ∠9° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 6 days on 7 December 2031 at 03:20.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2031 after 15 days on 28 December 2031 at 17:33.
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 0.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1931" and ∠1949".
The Moon is 28 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 394 of Meeus index or 1347 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 56 minutes and it is 55 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 48 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 21 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 ∠312.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠334.7°.
9 days since point of apogee on 3 December 2031 at 22:35 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 15 December 2031 at 21:31 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 371 110 km (230 597 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 2 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 360 489 km (223 997 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 12 December 2031 at 01:37 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 24 December 2031 at 18:44 in ♉ Taurus.
13 days since the last northern standstill on 30 November 2031 at 00:08 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.350° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-20.356° at the point of next southern standstill on 14 December 2031 at 04:45 in ♐ Sagittarius.
1 day since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 14 December 2031 at 09:06 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