Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 99% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 13 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 ∠12° of ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 5 days on 10 May 2011 at 20:33.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2011 after 1 day 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 2.9% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1954" and ∠1898".
The Moon is 13 days young and navigating from the first to the middle 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°.
1 day since point of perigee on 15 May 2011 at 11:18 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 27 May 2011 at 09:58 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 366 879 km (227 968 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 10 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 006 km (251 659 mi).
9 days after descending node on 6 May 2011 at 14:54 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 19 May 2011 at 09:03 in ♐ Sagittarius.
10 days since the last northern standstill on 6 May 2011 at 03:54 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠23.421° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠-23.403° at the point of next southern standstill on 18 May 2011 at 23:26 in ♐ Sagittarius.
24 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 1 day 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