Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 4% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 2 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 ∠23° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 2 days on 19 December 2044 at 08:53.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2045 after 12 days on 3 January 2045 at 10:20.
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 9.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 2 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 556 of Meeus index or 1509 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 32 minutes and it is 6 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2044. 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 48 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 15 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 ∠156.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠182.1°.
Moon is at apogee at 20:29 about 15 days since last perigee on 6 December 2044 at 08:05 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 13 days until point of next perigee on 3 January 2045 at 19:25 in ♋ Cancer.
This apogee Moon is 406 354 km (252 497 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's farthest apogee of 2044. It is 946 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 355 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
10 days after descending node on 10 December 2044 at 12:32 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 24 December 2044 at 21:19 in ♒ Aquarius.
2 days since the last southern standstill on 19 December 2044 at 04:38 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.031° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.069° at the point of next northern standstill on 2 January 2045 at 06:32 in ♊ Gemini.
23 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 12 days on 3 January 2045 at 10:20 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
