Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 91% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 12 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 ∠14° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 5 days on 3 January 2066 at 09:56.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2066 after 3 days on 11 January 2066 at 15:07.
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 12 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 816 of Meeus index or 1769 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 47 minutes and it is 49 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 57 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 12 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 ∠16.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠35.6°.
1 day since point of apogee on 7 January 2066 at 15:46 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 15 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 23 January 2066 at 15:57 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 405 423 km (251 918 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 15 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 363 177 km (225 668 mi).
11 days after ascending node on 28 December 2065 at 03:31 in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 11 January 2066 at 07:55 in ♋ Cancer.
At 23:20 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠25.491°. This is the year's northernmost lunar standstill of 2066. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-25.483° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 22 January 2066 at 16:31.
11 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 3 days on 11 January 2066 at 15:07 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