Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 23% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 5 days 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 ∠23° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 5 days on 10 April 2013 at 09:35.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2013 after 10 days on 25 April 2013 at 19:57.
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 7.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1912".
The Moon is 5 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 164 of Meeus index or 1117 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 53 minutes and it is 35 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
The length of the current synodic month is 2 hours and 9 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 54 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 ∠110.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠143.3°.
Moon is at apogee at 22:21 about 15 days since last perigee on 31 March 2013 at 03:55 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next perigee on 27 April 2013 at 19:48 in ♏ Scorpio.
This apogee Moon is 404 865 km (251 571 mi) away from Earth. It is 543 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 1 844 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
2 days after descending node on 12 April 2013 at 12:12 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 26 April 2013 at 14:07 in ♏ Scorpio.
At 05:29 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠20.189°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-20.170° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 28 April 2013 at 19:05.
16 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 10 days on 25 April 2013 at 19:57 in ♎ Libra 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