Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 1% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 1 day young.
The moon rises in the morning and sets in the evening. It is visible toward the southwest in early evening.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is leaving the last ∠3° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♊ Gemini later.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 1 day on 3 May 2011 at 06:51.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2011 after 12 days on 17 May 2011 at 11:09.
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 5.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1807" and ∠1903".
The Moon is 1 day young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 140 of Meeus index or 1093 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 12 minutes 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 1 hour and 28 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 35 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 ∠216.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠248.4°.
4 days since point of apogee on 29 April 2011 at 18:02 in ♓ Pisces 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 15 May 2011 at 11:18 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 396 715 km (246 507 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 10 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 362 133 km (225 019 mi).
12 days after ascending node on 22 April 2011 at 01:05 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 6 May 2011 at 14:54 in ♊ Gemini.
12 days since the last southern standstill on 21 April 2011 at 13:40 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-23.498° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠23.421° at the point of next northern standstill on 6 May 2011 at 03:54 in ♊ Gemini.
12 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 12 days on 17 May 2011 at 11:09 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