Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 7% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 26 days old.
The moon rises after midnight to early morning and sets in the afternoon. It is visible in the early morning low to the east.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing first ∠4° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 4 days on 21 April 2006 at 03:28.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2006 after 17 days on 13 May 2006 at 06:51.
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% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1965" and ∠1907".
The Moon is 26 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 77 of Meeus index or 1030 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 29 minutes and it is 13 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2006. 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 15 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 54 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 ∠19° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠38.4°.
Moon is at perigee at 10:38 about 15 days since last apogee on 9 April 2006 at 13:16 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next apogee on 7 May 2006 at 06:47 in ♍ Virgo.
This perigee Moon is 363 737 km (226 016 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 229 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 6 619 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
Moon is in ascending node in ♈ Aries at 12:59 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next descending node later on 9 May 2006 at 08:29 in ♎ Libra.
6 days since the last southern standstill on 18 April 2006 at 22:27 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.668° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.616° at the point of next northern standstill on 1 May 2006 at 16:26 in ♊ Gemini.
At 12:59 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 2 days on 27 April 2006 at 19:44 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