Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 97% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 16 days old.
The moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It is visible to the southwest and it is high in the sky after midnight.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠24° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 25 May 2013 at 04:25.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2013 after 27 days on 23 June 2013 at 11:32.
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 4.1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1894".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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 perigee at 01:45 about 12 days since last apogee on 13 May 2013 at 13:31 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 14 days until point of next apogee on 9 June 2013 at 21:40 in ♊ Gemini.
This perigee Moon is 358 375 km (222 684 mi) away from Earth. It is 4 133 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 11 981 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
2 days after ascending node on 24 May 2013 at 00:40 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 6 June 2013 at 00:59 in ♉ Taurus.
At 04:47 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-20.182°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠20.200° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 8 June 2013 at 19:16.
2 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 13 days on 8 June 2013 at 15:56 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