Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 97% 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 ∠5° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 5 days on 12 December 2078 at 07:52.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2078 after 1 day on 18 December 2078 at 23:34.
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 1.1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1972" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 13 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 976 of Meeus index or 1929 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 18 hours and 42 minutes and it is 1 hour and 57 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 5 hours and 58 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 5 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 ∠196.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠225.6°.
Moon is at perigee at 21:10 about 15 days since last apogee on 2 December 2078 at 15:34 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next apogee on 30 December 2078 at 02:17 in ♏ Scorpio.
This perigee Moon is 358 828 km (222 965 mi) away from Earth. It is 3 680 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 11 528 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
1 day after ascending node on 15 December 2078 at 19:09 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 28 December 2078 at 21:50 in ♏ Scorpio.
10 days since the last southern standstill on 6 December 2078 at 12:06 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.555° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.536° at the point of next northern standstill on 19 December 2078 at 14:06 in ♊ Gemini.
1 day since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 18 December 2078 at 23:34 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