Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 6% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 2 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 ∠19° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 2 days on 10 May 2013 at 00:29.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2013 after 12 days on 25 May 2013 at 04:25.
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 7.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1769" and ∠1899".
The Moon is 2 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 165 of Meeus index or 1118 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 28 minutes and it is 10 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2013. 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 44 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 19 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 ∠143.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠168.8°.
14 days since point of perigee on 27 April 2013 at 19:48 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 day until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 13 May 2013 at 13:31 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 405 251 km (251 811 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next day until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 827 km (252 169 mi).
2 days after descending node on 9 May 2013 at 19:12 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 24 May 2013 at 00:40 in ♏ Scorpio.
At 12:30 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠20.170°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-20.182° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 26 May 2013 at 04:47.
15 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 12 days on 25 May 2013 at 04:25 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