Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 81% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 19 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 passing about ∠13° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 3 days on 6 April 2012 at 19:19.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2012 after 25 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 2.4% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1960" and ∠1915".
The Moon is 19 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°.
2 days 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 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 22 April 2012 at 13:49 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 365 637 km (227 196 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 12 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 422 km (252 539 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♐ Sagittarius at 00:47 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next descending node later on 24 April 2012 at 03:44 in ♊ Gemini.
At 21:03 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-21.814°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠21.738° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 25 April 2012 at 05:37.
At 00:47 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 10 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