Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 68% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 20 days old.
The 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.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing first ∠2° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 5 days on 7 May 2001 at 13:53.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2001 after 23 days on 6 June 2001 at 01:39.
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 6.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1772" and ∠1899".
The Moon is 20 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 16 of Meeus index or 969 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 20 minutes and it is 2 hours and 8 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 1 hour and 24 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 45 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 ∠267.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠299.7°.
11 days since point of perigee on 2 May 2001 at 03:37 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 day until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 15 May 2001 at 01:29 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 404 410 km (251 289 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next day until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 141 km (251 122 mi).
2 days after descending node on 11 May 2001 at 11:02 in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 25 May 2001 at 13:51 in ♊ Gemini.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 11 May 2001 at 20:26 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-23.329° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠23.388° at the point of next northern standstill on 25 May 2001 at 23:03 in ♋ Cancer.
15 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♋ Cancer the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 9 days on 23 May 2001 at 02:46 in ♊ Gemini 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