Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 38% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 23 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 ∠3° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♏ Scorpio later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 1 day on 3 January 2043 at 06:08.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2043 after 20 days on 25 January 2043 at 06:56.
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 9.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 23 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°).
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.
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 is at apogee at 19:56 about 11 days since last perigee on 24 December 2042 at 02:12 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 15 days until point of next perigee on 19 January 2043 at 20:02 in ♉ Taurus.
This apogee Moon is 404 558 km (251 381 mi) away from Earth. It is 850 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 151 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
1 day after descending node on 3 January 2043 at 07:24 in ♎ Libra 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 17 January 2043 at 04:57 in ♈ Aries.
8 days since the last northern standstill on 26 December 2042 at 13:20 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.289° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.311° at the point of next southern standstill on 9 January 2043 at 20:09 in ♐ Sagittarius.
14 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♈ Aries the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 11 January 2043 at 06:53 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