Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 77% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 10 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 ∠5° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 2 days on 20 May 2010 at 23:43.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2010 after 4 days on 27 May 2010 at 23:07.
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 2.9% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1950" and ∠1895".
The Moon is 10 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 128 of Meeus index or 1081 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 10 minutes and it is 1 hour and 44 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 34 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 35 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 ∠282.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠311.3°.
3 days since point of perigee on 20 May 2010 at 08:38 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 3 June 2010 at 16:50 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 367 642 km (228 442 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 11 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 266 km (251 199 mi).
5 days after descending node on 17 May 2010 at 15:39 in ♋ Cancer the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 30 May 2010 at 18:07 in ♑ Capricorn.
7 days since the last northern standstill on 15 May 2010 at 23:07 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠25.049° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-25.029° at the point of next southern standstill on 28 May 2010 at 22:09 in ♐ Sagittarius.
19 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 4 days on 27 May 2010 at 23:07 in ♏ Scorpio 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