Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 84% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 18 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 ∠7° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 4 days on 6 January 2042 at 08:54.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2042 after 25 days on 5 February 2042 at 01:58.
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 9.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1772" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 18 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 519 of Meeus index or 1472 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 36 minutes and it is 1 hour and 39 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 8 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 1 minute 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 ∠300.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠326°.
14 days since point of perigee on 27 December 2041 at 09:54 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 12 January 2042 at 04:04 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 404 517 km (251 355 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next day until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 808 km (251 536 mi).
9 days after ascending node on 31 December 2041 at 22:59 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 15 January 2042 at 03:00 in ♏ Scorpio.
4 days since the last northern standstill on 5 January 2042 at 12:44 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.722° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠-27.777° at the point of next southern standstill on 19 January 2042 at 23:38 in ♐ Sagittarius.
9 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♈ Aries the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 11 days on 21 January 2042 at 20:42 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