Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 96% 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 ∠21° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 18 December 2040 at 12:16.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2041 after 27 days on 17 January 2041 at 07:11.
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 9.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1773" 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 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°.
13 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 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 22 December 2040 at 13:29 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 404 200 km (251 158 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 2 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 778 km (252 139 mi).
4 days after ascending node on 15 December 2040 at 21:13 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 9 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 30 December 2040 at 10:13 in ♏ Scorpio.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 19 December 2040 at 10:11 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠26.761° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-26.763° at the point of next southern standstill on 2 January 2041 at 11:44 in ♑ Capricorn.
4 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 13 days on 2 January 2041 at 19:08 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