Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 97% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 13 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 ∠3° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♊ Gemini later.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 5 days on 2 December 2068 at 05:21.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2068 after 1 day on 8 December 2068 at 23:42.
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 0.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1938" and ∠1948".
The Moon is 13 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 852 of Meeus index or 1805 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 2 minutes and it is 2 hours and 10 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decrease with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at perigee (∠0° or ∠360°).
The length of the current synodic month is 3 hours and 18 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 45 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 ∠241.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠279.4°.
1 day since point of perigee on 5 December 2068 at 19:40 in ♈ Aries 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 17 December 2068 at 15:04 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 369 841 km (229 809 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 10 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 457 km (251 318 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♉ Taurus at 05:58 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 21 December 2068 at 08:54 in ♏ Scorpio.
11 days since the last southern standstill on 26 November 2068 at 02:57 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-20.658° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠20.669° at the point of next northern standstill on 9 December 2068 at 01:53 in ♊ Gemini.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 8 December 2068 at 23:42 in ♊ Gemini 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