Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 92% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 17 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 ∠21° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 2 days on 6 May 2012 at 03:35.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2012 after 26 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 2.8% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1955" and ∠1901".
The Moon is 17 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°.
2 days 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 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 19 May 2012 at 16:13 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 366 655 km (227 829 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 11 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 451 km (252 557 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 7 May 2012 at 09:43 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 21 May 2012 at 09:21 in ♊ Gemini.
At 06:18 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-21.719°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠21.709° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 22 May 2012 at 11:13.
1 day 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 12 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