Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 86% 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 ∠11° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 3 days on 16 December 2043 at 08:02.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2044 after 26 days on 14 January 2044 at 18:51.
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 1.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1924" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 18 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 543 of Meeus index or 1496 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 11 minutes and it is 55 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2043. 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 6 hours and 27 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 36 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 ∠179.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠204.4°.
3 days since point of perigee on 15 December 2043 at 22:01 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 28 December 2043 at 19:33 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 372 487 km (231 453 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 9 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 403 km (252 527 mi).
9 days after ascending node on 10 December 2043 at 06:19 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 22 December 2043 at 16:01 in ♍ Virgo.
2 days since the last northern standstill on 16 December 2043 at 16:08 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.409° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.400° at the point of next southern standstill on 30 December 2043 at 12:51 in ♐ Sagittarius.
9 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♓ Pisces the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 11 days on 31 December 2043 at 09:48 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