Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 75% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 19 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 ∠13° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 4 days on 28 April 2010 at 12:18.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2010 after 24 days on 27 May 2010 at 23:07.
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% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1793" and ∠1903".
The Moon is 19 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 127 of Meeus index or 1080 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 35 minutes and it is 2 hours and 25 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 9 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours 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 ∠247.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠282.4°.
8 days since point of perigee on 24 April 2010 at 20:59 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 6 May 2010 at 21:53 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 399 762 km (248 401 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 3 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 231 km (251 177 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♑ Capricorn at 12:35 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next descending node later on 17 May 2010 at 15:39 in ♋ Cancer.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 1 May 2010 at 14:01 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-25.109° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠25.049° at the point of next northern standstill on 15 May 2010 at 23:07 in ♊ Gemini.
At 12:35 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 10 days on 14 May 2010 at 01:04 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