Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 97% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 16 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 ∠6° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 6 May 2012 at 03:35.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2012 after 27 days on 4 June 2012 at 11:12.
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 3.4% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1967" and ∠1901".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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°.
1 day since point of perigee on 6 May 2012 at 03:33 in ♏ Scorpio 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 19 May 2012 at 16:13 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 364 427 km (226 444 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 12 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 451 km (252 557 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♐ Sagittarius at 09:43 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 21 May 2012 at 09:21 in ♊ Gemini.
12 days since the last northern standstill on 25 April 2012 at 05:37 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.738° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-21.719° at the point of next southern standstill on 8 May 2012 at 06:18 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 09:43 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 13 days on 20 May 2012 at 23:47 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