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 leaving the last ∠2° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♌ Leo later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 3 days on 3 December 2074 at 14:03.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2075 after 25 days on 2 January 2075 at 09:39.
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 8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1798" and ∠1948".
The Moon is 18 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 926 of Meeus index or 1879 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 24 minutes and it is 53 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 20 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 49 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 ∠352.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠7.7°.
3 days since point of apogee on 3 December 2074 at 13:40 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 17 December 2074 at 20:35 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 398 643 km (247 705 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 10 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 126 km (221 908 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♋ Cancer at 03:38 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 12 days until Moon's next descending node later on 20 December 2074 at 02:32 in ♑ Capricorn.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 6 December 2074 at 03:05 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.807° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-21.818° at the point of next southern standstill on 19 December 2074 at 07:43 in ♑ Capricorn.
At 03:38 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 10 days on 18 December 2074 at 07:20 in ♐ Sagittarius 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