Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 85% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 18 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 about ∠25° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 3 days on 27 April 2002 at 03:00.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2002 after 25 days on 26 May 2002 at 11:51.
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 1.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1878" and ∠1905".
The Moon is 18 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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°.
4 days since point of perigee on 25 April 2002 at 16:25 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 7 May 2002 at 19:15 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 381 710 km (237 184 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 7 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 483 km (251 955 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♐ Sagittarius at 00:29 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 14 May 2002 at 13:00 in ♊ Gemini.
11 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 day to face maximum declination of ∠-24.975° at the point of next southern standstill on 1 May 2002 at 16:55 in ♑ Capricorn.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 11 days on 12 May 2002 at 10:45 in ♉ Taurus 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