Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 99% 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 passing about ∠10° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 7 days on 6 December 2073 at 09:33.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2073 after 1 day on 14 December 2073 at 13:49.
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 8.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1789" and ∠1949".
The Moon is 13 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 914 of Meeus index or 1867 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 43 minutes and it is 1 hour and 59 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 1 hour and 1 minute shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 8 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠22.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠43.1°.
3 days since point of apogee on 9 December 2073 at 22:16 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 25 December 2073 at 23:45 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 400 693 km (248 979 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 12 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 365 051 km (226 832 mi).
9 days after descending node on 3 December 2073 at 22:40 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 18 December 2073 at 11:14 in ♌ Leo.
12 days since the last southern standstill on 1 December 2073 at 10:11 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-20.206° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠20.261° at the point of next northern standstill on 15 December 2073 at 22:12 in ♋ Cancer.
22 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 14 December 2073 at 13:49 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