Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 44% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 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 ∠9° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 7 days on 29 April 2014 at 06:14.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2014 after 8 days on 14 May 2014 at 19:16.
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 7.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1902".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 177 of Meeus index or 1130 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 26 minutes and it is 1 hour and 2 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 18 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 51 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠76.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠112.5°.
Moon is at apogee at 10:22 about 13 days since last perigee on 23 April 2014 at 00:27 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next perigee on 18 May 2014 at 11:58 in ♑ Capricorn.
This apogee Moon is 404 319 km (251 232 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's closest apogee of 2014. It is 1 089 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 268 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
8 days after descending node on 28 April 2014 at 11:36 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 12 May 2014 at 22:06 in ♎ Libra.
3 days since the last northern standstill on 2 May 2014 at 15:59 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.961° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.992° at the point of next southern standstill on 16 May 2014 at 20:10 in ♐ Sagittarius.
20 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♎ Libra the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 8 days on 14 May 2014 at 19:16 in ♏ Scorpio 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