Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 2% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 28 days old.
The moon rises after midnight to early morning and sets in the afternoon. It is visible in the early morning low to the east.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠13° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 6 days on 12 May 2012 at 21:47.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2012 after 15 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 7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1896".
The Moon is 28 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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 16:13 about 13 days since last perigee on 6 May 2012 at 03:33 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 15 days until point of next perigee on 3 June 2012 at 13:19 in ♏ Scorpio.
This apogee Moon is 406 451 km (252 557 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's farthest apogee of 2012. It is 1 043 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 258 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
12 days after ascending node on 7 May 2012 at 09:43 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 21 May 2012 at 09:21 in ♊ Gemini.
11 days since the last southern standstill on 8 May 2012 at 06:18 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-21.719° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠21.709° at the point of next northern standstill on 22 May 2012 at 11:13 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 1 day 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