Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 67% 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 about ∠5° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 6 days on 9 May 2009 at 04:01.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2009 after 23 days on 7 June 2009 at 18:12.
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 6.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1774" and ∠1898".
The Moon is 20 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 115 of Meeus index or 1068 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 48 minutes and it is 1 hour and 24 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 3 hours and 56 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 13 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 ∠311.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠332.7°.
1 day since point of apogee on 14 May 2009 at 02:57 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 26 May 2009 at 03:44 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 404 154 km (251 130 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 10 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 361 155 km (224 411 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♒ Aquarius at 07:13 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 12 days until Moon's next descending node later on 28 May 2009 at 10:19 in ♌ Leo.
3 days since the last southern standstill on 11 May 2009 at 20:03 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.486° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠26.451° at the point of next northern standstill on 25 May 2009 at 16:56 in ♊ Gemini.
At 07:13 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 9 days on 24 May 2009 at 12:11 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