Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 10% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 3 days 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 passing about ∠22° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 3 days on 3 May 2011 at 06:51.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2011 after 10 days on 17 May 2011 at 11:09.
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% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1846" and ∠1902".
The Moon is 3 days 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°.
6 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 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 15 May 2011 at 11:18 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 388 228 km (241 234 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 8 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 362 133 km (225 019 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♊ Gemini at 14:54 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 12 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 19 May 2011 at 09:03 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 03:54 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠23.421°. Over the upcoming 12 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-23.403° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 18 May 2011 at 23:26.
14 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 10 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