Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 98% 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 ∠18° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 22 December 2056 at 01:34.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2057 after 28 days on 20 January 2057 at 20:01.
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 8.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1799" 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 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°.
4 days since point of apogee on 19 December 2056 at 02:50 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 3 January 2057 at 19:56 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 398 445 km (247 582 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 11 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 360 814 km (224 199 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♋ Cancer at 00:24 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 12 days until Moon's next descending node later on 5 January 2057 at 04:48 in ♑ Capricorn.
At 00:17 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠22.858°. This is the year's northernmost lunar standstill of 2056. Over the upcoming 12 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-22.850° at the point of next southern standstill in ♑ Capricorn on 5 January 2057 at 04:44.
At 00:24 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 12 days on 5 January 2057 at 09:49 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