Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 1% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 1 day 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 ∠16° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 1 day on 21 April 2012 at 07:18.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2012 after 13 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 7.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1908".
The Moon is 1 day young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 152 of Meeus index or 1105 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 29 minutes and it is 1 hour and 14 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 3 hours and 45 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 18 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 ∠168.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠191.8°.
Moon is at apogee at 13:49 about 14 days since last perigee on 7 April 2012 at 16:59 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 13 days until point of next perigee on 6 May 2012 at 03:33 in ♏ Scorpio.
This apogee Moon is 406 422 km (252 539 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 014 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 287 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
12 days after ascending node on 10 April 2012 at 00:47 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 24 April 2012 at 03:44 in ♊ Gemini.
11 days since the last southern standstill on 10 April 2012 at 21:03 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-21.814° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠21.738° at the point of next northern standstill on 25 April 2012 at 05:37 in ♊ Gemini.
12 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 13 days on 6 May 2012 at 03:35 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