Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 89% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 11 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 ∠23° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 4 days on 15 April 2024 at 19:13.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2024 after 3 days on 23 April 2024 at 23:49.
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 7.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1909".
The Moon is 11 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 300 of Meeus index or 1253 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 1 minute and it is 15 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2024. 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 3 hours and 43 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 26 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 ∠17.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠36°.
Moon is at apogee at 02:09 about 12 days since last perigee on 7 April 2024 at 17:53 in ♓ Pisces the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 15 days until point of next perigee on 5 May 2024 at 22:11 in ♈ Aries.
This apogee Moon is 405 625 km (252 044 mi) away from Earth. It is 217 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 1 084 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
11 days after ascending node on 8 April 2024 at 12:20 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 22 April 2024 at 10:45 in ♎ Libra.
6 days since the last northern standstill on 13 April 2024 at 22:36 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.552° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.509° at the point of next southern standstill on 28 April 2024 at 14:28 in ♐ Sagittarius.
11 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♈ Aries the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 3 days on 23 April 2024 at 23:49 in ♎ Libra 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
