Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 1% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 28 days old.
The moon rises after midnight to early morning and sets in the afternoon. It is visible in the early morning low to the east.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠19° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 6 days on 16 December 2068 at 14:11.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2069 after 15 days on 7 January 2069 at 13:43.
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 6.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1835" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 28 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
5 days since point of apogee on 17 December 2068 at 15:04 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 22 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 14 January 2069 at 12:33 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 390 700 km (242 770 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 22 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 393 km (251 278 mi).
2 days after ascending node on 21 December 2068 at 08:54 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 3 January 2069 at 11:40 in ♉ Taurus.
At 11:18 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-20.663°. Over the upcoming 12 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠20.637° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 5 January 2069 at 11:24.
2 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 24 December 2068 at 13:44 in ♐ Sagittarius 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