Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 65% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 9 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 passing about ∠23° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 1 day on 25 December 2055 at 22:29.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2056 after 6 days on 2 January 2056 at 22:05.
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 9.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 9 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 692 of Meeus index or 1645 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 55 minutes and it is 1 hour and 54 minutes shorter 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 11 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 52 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 ∠45.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠75.8°.
Moon is at apogee at 05:00 about 11 days since last perigee on 15 December 2055 at 10:52 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 14 days until point of next perigee on 10 January 2056 at 16:48 in ♎ Libra.
This apogee Moon is 404 566 km (251 386 mi) away from Earth. It is 842 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 143 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
6 days after descending node on 20 December 2055 at 21:00 in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 4 January 2056 at 07:42 in ♌ Leo.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 19 December 2055 at 10:14 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-21.183° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠21.189° at the point of next northern standstill on 2 January 2056 at 21:00 in ♋ Cancer.
19 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 2 January 2056 at 22:05 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