Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 69% 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 leaving the last ∠4° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♉ Taurus later.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 1 day on 23 December 2066 at 16:07.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2066 after 6 days on 31 December 2066 at 14:41.
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 4.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1857" 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 828 of Meeus index or 1781 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 59 minutes and it is 19 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2066. 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 45 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 24 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 ∠346.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠2.4°.
20 days since point of apogee on 5 December 2066 at 07:41 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 26 December 2066 at 09:01 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 386 000 km (239 849 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 358 544 km (222 789 mi).
8 days after ascending node on 17 December 2066 at 07:22 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 5 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 30 December 2066 at 17:42 in ♊ Gemini.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 16 December 2066 at 13:29 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-23.934° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠23.938° at the point of next northern standstill on 29 December 2066 at 18:32 in ♊ Gemini.
8 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 31 December 2066 at 14:41 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