Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 89% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 18 days old.
The moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It is visible to the southwest and it is high in the sky after midnight.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is leaving the last ∠2° of ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♐ Sagittarius later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 2 days on 6 April 2012 at 19:19.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2012 after 26 days on 6 May 2012 at 03:35.
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 2.8% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1970" and ∠1915".
The Moon is 18 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 151 of Meeus index or 1104 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 41 minutes and it is 12 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2012. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
The length of the current synodic month is 3 hours and 57 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 6 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 ∠142.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠168.7°.
1 day since point of perigee on 7 April 2012 at 16:59 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 13 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 22 April 2012 at 13:49 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 363 873 km (226 100 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 13 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 422 km (252 539 mi).
12 days after descending node on 28 March 2012 at 00:19 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 10 April 2012 at 00:47 in ♐ Sagittarius.
11 days since the last northern standstill on 28 March 2012 at 23:40 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.890° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-21.814° at the point of next southern standstill on 10 April 2012 at 21:03 in ♐ Sagittarius.
26 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 11 days on 21 April 2012 at 07:18 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is going to be in a New Moon geocentric conjunction with the Sun and thus forming the next Sun-Moon-Earth 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