Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 96% 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 ∠12° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 4 days on 20 April 2002 at 12:48.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2002 after 1 day on 27 April 2002 at 03:00.
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 3.2% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1970" and ∠1907".
The Moon is 13 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 28 of Meeus index or 981 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 24 minutes and it is 2 hours and 23 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 2 hours and 40 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 23 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 ∠204.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠233.6°.
Moon is at perigee at 16:25 about 15 days since last apogee on 10 April 2002 at 05:32 in ♓ Pisces 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 7 May 2002 at 19:15 in ♓ Pisces.
This perigee Moon is 360 088 km (223 748 mi) away from Earth. It is 2 420 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 10 268 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
8 days after ascending node on 17 April 2002 at 09:15 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 30 April 2002 at 00:29 in ♐ Sagittarius.
6 days since the last northern standstill on 19 April 2002 at 02:11 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠24.908° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠-24.975° at the point of next southern standstill on 1 May 2002 at 16:55 in ♑ Capricorn.
8 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 27 April 2002 at 03:00 in ♏ Scorpio 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