Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 99% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 16 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 ∠13° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 20 December 2048 at 06:39.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2049 after 28 days on 19 January 2049 at 02:29.
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.
Lunar disc appears visually 9.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 605 of Meeus index or 1558 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 54 minutes and it is 3 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
The length of the current synodic month is 1 hour and 50 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 19 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠348.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠3.8°.
Moon is at apogee at 00:28 about 14 days since last perigee on 6 December 2048 at 07:58 in ♐ Sagittarius 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 2049 at 21:03 in ♑ Capricorn.
This apogee Moon is 406 367 km (252 505 mi) away from Earth. It is 959 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 342 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
2 days after descending node on 19 December 2048 at 09:29 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 2 January 2049 at 09:51 in ♐ Sagittarius.
2 days since the last northern standstill on 19 December 2048 at 07:59 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠22.926° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-22.914° at the point of next southern standstill on 2 January 2049 at 09:17 in ♐ Sagittarius.
15 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 13 days on 4 January 2049 at 02:24 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