Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 2% 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 ∠18° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 1 day on 20 May 2012 at 23:47.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2012 after 12 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 6.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1781" and ∠1895".
The Moon is 1 day young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 153 of Meeus index or 1106 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 15 minutes and it is 1 hour and 53 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 2 hours and 31 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 32 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 ∠191.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠217.1°.
2 days since point of apogee on 19 May 2012 at 16:13 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 3 June 2012 at 13:19 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 402 356 km (250 012 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 12 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 358 483 km (222 751 mi).
1 day after descending node on 21 May 2012 at 09:21 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 3 June 2012 at 20:38 in ♏ Scorpio.
At 11:13 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠21.709°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-21.714° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 4 June 2012 at 17:05.
15 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 12 days on 4 June 2012 at 11:12 in ♐ Sagittarius 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