Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 87% 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 passing about ∠20° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 3 days on 25 December 2072 at 07:15.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2073 after 26 days on 23 January 2073 at 20:05.
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 0.2% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1955" 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 902 of Meeus index or 1855 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 12 minutes and it is 2 hours and 18 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. 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 2 hours and 28 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 35 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 ∠69° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠105.7°.
11 days since point of apogee on 17 December 2072 at 05:19 in ♓ Pisces 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 29 December 2072 at 06:59 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 366 641 km (227 820 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 368 220 km (228 801 mi).
12 days after descending node on 15 December 2072 at 14:09 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 29 December 2072 at 08:37 in ♍ Virgo.
3 days since the last northern standstill on 25 December 2072 at 11:40 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠19.089° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠-19.079° at the point of next southern standstill on 7 January 2073 at 10:43 in ♑ Capricorn.
26 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♍ Virgo the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 10 days on 8 January 2073 at 08:11 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