Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 4% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 27 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 first ∠3° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 6 days on 11 June 2012 at 10:41.
Next Full Moon is the Buck Moon of July 2012 after 16 days on 3 July 2012 at 18:52.
There is low ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at big angle, so their combined tidal force is weak.
Lunar disc appears visually 6.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1770" and ∠1888".
The Moon is 27 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
1 day since point of apogee on 16 June 2012 at 01:24 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 14 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 1 July 2012 at 18:01 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 404 894 km (251 589 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 14 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 362 363 km (225 162 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♉ Taurus at 15:43 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 1 July 2012 at 05:45 in ♐ Sagittarius.
12 days since the last southern standstill on 4 June 2012 at 17:05 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-21.714° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠21.721° at the point of next northern standstill on 18 June 2012 at 17:37 in ♊ Gemini.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 2 days on 19 June 2012 at 15:02 in ♊ Gemini 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