Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 98% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 13 days young.
The moon rises in the afternoon and sets after midnight to early morning. It is visible to the southeast in early evening and it is up for most of the night.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is leaving the last ∠4° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♋ Cancer later.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 5 days on 29 December 2052 at 02:28.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2053 after 1 day on 4 January 2053 at 17:46.
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 1.1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1972" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 13 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 655 of Meeus index or 1608 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 18 hours and 57 minutes and it is 1 hour and 38 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 6 hours and 13 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 50 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 ∠190.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠217.6°.
Moon is at perigee at 21:39 about 14 days since last apogee on 20 December 2052 at 00:02 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next apogee on 16 January 2053 at 07:55 in ♐ Sagittarius.
This perigee Moon is 357 808 km (222 332 mi) away from Earth. It is 4 700 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 12 548 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
6 days after descending node on 28 December 2052 at 11:06 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 9 January 2053 at 21:36 in ♍ Virgo.
At 18:58 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠18.398°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-18.367° at the point of next southern standstill in ♑ Capricorn on 17 January 2053 at 11:59.
20 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♍ Virgo the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 4 January 2053 at 17:46 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