Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 11% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 3 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 first ∠1° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 3 days on 10 May 2013 at 00:29.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2013 after 11 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 ∠1768" and ∠1899".
The Moon is 3 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°.
Moon is at apogee at 13:31 about 15 days since last perigee on 27 April 2013 at 19:48 in ♏ Scorpio 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 26 May 2013 at 01:45 in ♐ Sagittarius.
This apogee Moon is 405 827 km (252 169 mi) away from Earth. It is 419 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 882 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
3 days after descending node on 9 May 2013 at 19:12 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 24 May 2013 at 00:40 in ♏ Scorpio.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 12 May 2013 at 12:30 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.170° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-20.182° at the point of next southern standstill on 26 May 2013 at 04:47 in ♐ Sagittarius.
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 11 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