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 about ∠16° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 23 December 2081 at 03:55.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2082 after 17 days on 14 January 2082 at 18:11.
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 3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1893" 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 1013 of Meeus index or 1966 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 52 minutes and it is 2 hours and 26 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 8 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 55 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 ∠52.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠84.8°.
6 days since point of perigee on 22 December 2081 at 10:49 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 5 January 2082 at 22:19 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 378 648 km (235 281 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 8 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 473 km (251 328 mi).
6 days after descending node on 21 December 2081 at 12:04 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 3 January 2082 at 19:51 in ♓ Pisces.
12 days since the last northern standstill on 16 December 2081 at 08:03 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.126° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-28.138° at the point of next southern standstill on 29 December 2081 at 05:56 in ♐ Sagittarius.
20 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♓ Pisces the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 30 December 2081 at 04:28 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