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 ∠9° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 1 day on 6 December 2056 at 22:31.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2056 after 13 days on 22 December 2056 at 01:34.
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 0.1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1951" and ∠1948".
The Moon is 2 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 704 of Meeus index or 1657 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 18 minutes and it is 1 hour and 3 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 26 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 43 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 ∠9.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠26.4°.
2 days since point of perigee on 6 December 2056 at 09:40 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 19 December 2056 at 02:50 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 367 428 km (228 309 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 10 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 059 km (252 313 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♑ Capricorn at 17:42 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 23 December 2056 at 00:24 in ♋ Cancer.
At 17:13 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-22.839°. This is the year's southernmost lunar standstill of 2056. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠22.858° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 23 December 2056 at 00:17.
12 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♋ Cancer the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 13 days on 22 December 2056 at 01:34 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