Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 95% 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 ∠20° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 4 days on 31 December 2068 at 13:23.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2069 after 2 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 2.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1908" 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 853 of Meeus index or 1806 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 52 minutes and it is 2 hours and 11 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 1 hour and 8 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 55 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 ∠279.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠310.8°.
18 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 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 14 January 2069 at 12:33 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 375 767 km (233 491 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 9 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 393 km (251 278 mi).
2 days after descending node on 3 January 2069 at 11:40 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 17 January 2069 at 13:49 in ♏ Scorpio.
At 11:24 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠20.637°. This is the year's northernmost lunar standstill of 2069. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-20.561° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 19 January 2069 at 21:30.
15 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 2 days on 7 January 2069 at 13:43 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