Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 96% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 16 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 ∠17° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 14 December 2073 at 13:49.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2074 after 27 days on 13 January 2074 at 06:31.
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 5.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1842" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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°.
6 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 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 25 December 2073 at 23:45 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 389 091 km (241 770 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 9 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 365 051 km (226 832 mi).
12 days after descending node on 3 December 2073 at 22:40 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 18 December 2073 at 11:14 in ♌ Leo.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 15 December 2073 at 22:12 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.261° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-20.262° at the point of next southern standstill on 28 December 2073 at 21:38 in ♑ Capricorn.
25 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 12 days on 28 December 2073 at 16:55 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