Gibbous ♍ Virgo
Waning Gibbous is the lunar phase on . Seen from Earth, illuminated fraction of the Moon surface is 89% and getting smaller. The 18 days old Moon is in ♍ Virgo.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 3 days on 9 January 2012 at 07:30.
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.
Moon is passing first ∠1° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Lunar disc appears visually 1.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1918" and ∠1951".
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2012 after 26 days on 7 February 2012 at 21:54.
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.
The Moon is 18 days old. Earth's natural satellite is moving from the middle to the last part of current synodic month. This is lunation 148 of Meeus index or 1101 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 33 minutes. It is 1 hour and 22 minutes shorter than the next lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increasing with the 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 49 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 14 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
At the beginning of the lunation cycle the true anomaly is ∠42.1°. At the beginning of next synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠70.8°.
9 days after point of apogee on 2 January 2012 at 20:19 in ♈ Aries. The lunar orbit is getting narrow, while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 5 days, until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 17 January 2012 at 21:28 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 373 637 km (232 167 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 5 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 883 km (229 835 mi).
5 days after descending node on 6 January 2012 at 14:30 in ♊ Gemini. The Moon is located south of the ecliptic over the following 7 days, until the lunar orbit crosses from South to North in ascending node on 19 January 2012 at 18:26 in ♐ Sagittarius.
20 days since the beginning of current draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius, the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the cycle.
5 days since the previous standstill on 6 January 2012 at 21:46 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠22.539°, the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠-22.492° at the point of next southern standstill on 20 January 2012 at 02:12 in ♐ Sagittarius.
In 10 days on 23 January 2012 at 07:39 in ♒ Aquarius 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.