Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 86% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 11 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 ∠7° of ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 3 days on 9 June 2011 at 02:11.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2011 after 3 days on 15 June 2011 at 20:13.
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 3.7% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1961" and ∠1889".
The Moon is 11 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 141 of Meeus index or 1094 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 51 minutes and it is 2 hours and 5 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 53 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 16 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 ∠248.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠283.1°.
Moon is at perigee at 01:42 about 15 days since last apogee on 27 May 2011 at 09:58 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next apogee on 24 June 2011 at 04:13 in ♈ Aries.
This perigee Moon is 367 188 km (228 160 mi) away from Earth. It is 4 680 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 3 168 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
9 days after descending node on 2 June 2011 at 20:21 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 15 June 2011 at 18:35 in ♐ Sagittarius.
10 days since the last northern standstill on 2 June 2011 at 09:54 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠23.393° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠-23.399° at the point of next southern standstill on 15 June 2011 at 08:52 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 3 days on 15 June 2011 at 20:13 in ♐ Sagittarius 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