Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 94% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 12 days young.
The moon rises in the afternoon and sets after midnight to early morning. It is visible to the southeast in early evening and it is up for most of the night.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠23° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 5 days on 7 May 2014 at 03:15.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2014 after 2 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 2.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1844" and ∠1899".
The Moon is 12 days young and navigating from the first to the middle 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°.
6 days since point of apogee on 6 May 2014 at 10:22 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 18 May 2014 at 11:58 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 388 693 km (241 523 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 5 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 367 099 km (228 105 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♎ Libra at 22:06 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next descending node later on 25 May 2014 at 17:56 in ♈ Aries.
9 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 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.992° at the point of next southern standstill on 16 May 2014 at 20:10 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 22:06 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 2 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