Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 23% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 5 days young.
The moon rises in the morning and sets in the evening. It is visible toward the southwest in early evening.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠12° of ♓ Pisces tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 5 days on 31 December 2043 at 09:48.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2044 after 9 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 4.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1866" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 5 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 544 of Meeus index or 1497 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 18 hours and 16 minutes and it is 2 hours and 8 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 5 hours and 32 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 31 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 ∠204.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠235.6°.
7 days since point of apogee on 28 December 2043 at 19:33 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 13 January 2044 at 09:08 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 384 082 km (238 657 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 7 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 359 906 km (223 635 mi).
13 days after descending node on 22 December 2043 at 16:01 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 6 January 2044 at 06:50 in ♓ Pisces.
5 days since the last southern standstill on 30 December 2043 at 12:51 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.400° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.453° at the point of next northern standstill on 13 January 2044 at 02:29 in ♊ Gemini.
26 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♓ Pisces the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 9 days on 14 January 2044 at 18:51 in ♋ Cancer 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.
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