Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 88% 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 ∠22° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 3 days on 19 May 2002 at 19:42.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2002 after 2 days on 26 May 2002 at 11:51.
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 3.7% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1966" and ∠1895".
The Moon is 11 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 29 of Meeus index or 982 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 1 minute and it is 2 hours and 21 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 17 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 46 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 ∠233.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠268.1°.
Moon is at perigee at 15:31 about 15 days since last apogee on 7 May 2002 at 19:15 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 4 June 2002 at 12:58 in ♈ Aries.
This perigee Moon is 364 985 km (226 791 mi) away from Earth. It is 2 477 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 5 371 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
8 days after ascending node on 14 May 2002 at 13:00 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 27 May 2002 at 09:39 in ♐ Sagittarius.
7 days since the last northern standstill on 16 May 2002 at 07:53 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠25.039° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-25.056° at the point of next southern standstill on 29 May 2002 at 02:39 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 2 days on 26 May 2002 at 11:51 in ♐ Sagittarius 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