Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 91% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 12 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 ∠20° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 4 days on 10 December 2040 at 23:30.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2040 after 3 days on 18 December 2040 at 12:16.
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 5.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1852" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 12 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 506 of Meeus index or 1459 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 35 minutes and it is 1 hour 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 1 hour and 9 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours 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 ∠323.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠342.7°.
8 days since point of perigee on 6 December 2040 at 13:20 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 22 December 2040 at 13:29 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 387 116 km (240 543 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 7 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 778 km (252 139 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♉ Taurus at 21:13 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next descending node later on 30 December 2040 at 10:13 in ♏ Scorpio.
9 days since the last southern standstill on 6 December 2040 at 01:37 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.791° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠26.761° at the point of next northern standstill on 19 December 2040 at 10:11 in ♋ Cancer.
At 21:13 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 3 days on 18 December 2040 at 12:16 in ♊ Gemini 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