Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 3% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 27 days old.
The moon rises after midnight to early morning and sets in the afternoon. It is visible in the early morning low to the east.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing first ∠3° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 6 days on 6 January 2078 at 05:04.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2078 after 15 days on 28 January 2078 at 01:33.
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 5.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1844" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 27 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 964 of Meeus index or 1917 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 8 minutes and it is 2 hours and 23 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 2 hours and 24 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 39 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 ∠258.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠294.9°.
6 days since point of apogee on 6 January 2078 at 08:03 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 18 January 2078 at 18:32 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 388 690 km (241 521 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 6 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 308 km (229 477 mi).
2 days after descending node on 9 January 2078 at 15:53 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 22 January 2078 at 17:10 in ♉ Taurus.
At 21:22 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-26.463°. This is the year's southernmost lunar standstill of 2078. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠26.499° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 25 January 2078 at 19:02.
16 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 14 January 2078 at 01:14 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