Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 85% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 18 days old.
The moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It is visible to the southwest and it is high in the sky after midnight.
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 ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♍ Virgo later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 3 days on 28 December 2069 at 00:50.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2070 after 26 days on 26 January 2070 at 12:59.
There is low ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at big angle, so their combined tidal force is weak.
Lunar disc appears visually 4.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1864" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 18 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 865 of Meeus index or 1818 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 17 hours and 45 minutes and it is 2 hours and 15 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 5 hours and 1 minute longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 2 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 ∠211.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠244.8°.
Moon is at perigee at 15:07 about 21 days since last apogee on 10 December 2069 at 12:50 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 6 days until point of next apogee on 7 January 2070 at 04:45 in ♏ Scorpio.
This perigee Moon is 370 337 km (230 117 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's farthest perigee of 2069. It is 7 829 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 19 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
7 days after descending node on 23 December 2069 at 17:14 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 5 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 5 January 2070 at 18:42 in ♎ Libra.
4 days since the last northern standstill on 27 December 2069 at 01:12 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠19.319° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠-19.284° at the point of next southern standstill on 10 January 2070 at 01:11 in ♐ Sagittarius.
21 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♎ Libra the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 11 days on 12 January 2070 at 11:22 in ♑ Capricorn 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