Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 4% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 27 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 leaving the last ∠1° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♑ Capricorn later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 7 January 2040 at 11:05.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2040 after 16 days on 29 January 2040 at 07:54.
There is low ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at big angle, so their combined tidal force is weak.
Lunar disc appears visually 1.1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 27 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 494 of Meeus index or 1447 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 53 minutes and it is 6 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 51 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 18 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 ∠356.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠12.4°.
13 days since point of apogee on 29 December 2039 at 16:34 in ♊ Gemini 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 13 January 2040 at 10:03 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 363 323 km (225 758 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 769 km (222 307 mi).
1 day after descending node on 11 January 2040 at 10:06 in ♐ Sagittarius 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 24 January 2040 at 12:28 in ♊ Gemini.
12 days since the last northern standstill on 30 December 2039 at 16:29 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠25.448° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-25.460° at the point of next southern standstill on 13 January 2040 at 06:43 in ♑ Capricorn.
15 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 14 January 2040 at 03:25 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