Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 93% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 12 days young.
Moonrise and moonset
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.
Moon phases on nearby dates
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Moon is passing first ∠2° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
4 days after First Quarter
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 4 days on 20 December 2042 at 00:28.
Cold Moon after 2 days
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2042 after 2 days on 26 December 2042 at 17:43.
Moderate tide
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.
Apparent angular diameter ∠1958"
Lunar disc appears visually 0.4% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1958" and ∠1951".
Lunation 531 / 1484
The Moon is 12 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 531 of Meeus index or 1484 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 24 minutes and it is 2 hours and 10 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°).
Lunation length longer than mean
The length of the current synodic month is 3 hours and 40 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 23 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
Lunar orbit details for
True anomaly ∠232°
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠232° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠269.3°.
Moon at perigee
Moon is at perigee at 02:12 about 16 days since last apogee on 8 December 2042 at 00:37 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next apogee on 4 January 2043 at 19:56 in ♎ Libra.
This perigee Moon is 364 795 km(226 673 mi) away from Earth. It is 2 287 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 5 561 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
Moon after ascending node
3 days after ascending node on 21 December 2042 at 04:46 in ♈ Aries 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 3 January 2043 at 07:24 in ♎ Libra.
10 days since the last southern standstill on 13 December 2042 at 13:29 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.294° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.289° at the point of next northern standstill on 26 December 2042 at 13:20 in ♊ Gemini.
In 2 days on 26 December 2042 at 17:43 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.