Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 2% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 28 days old.
The moon rises after midnight to early morning and sets in the afternoon. It is visible in the early morning low to the east.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠9° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 12 April 2015 at 03:44.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2015 after 16 days on 4 May 2015 at 03:42.
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 2.7% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1964" and ∠1911".
The Moon is 28 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 188 of Meeus index or 1141 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 21 minutes and it is 5 minutes longer 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 3 hours and 23 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 46 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 ∠9.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠27.1°.
Moon is at perigee at 03:53 about 15 days since last apogee on 1 April 2015 at 12:59 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next apogee on 29 April 2015 at 03:55 in ♍ Virgo.
This perigee Moon is 361 026 km (224 331 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 482 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 9 330 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
Moon is in descending node in ♈ Aries at 13:07 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 1 May 2015 at 09:50 in ♎ Libra.
7 days since the last southern standstill on 10 April 2015 at 07:46 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.250° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.280° at the point of next northern standstill on 22 April 2015 at 23:26 in ♊ Gemini.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♎ Libra the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 18 April 2015 at 18:57 in ♈ Aries 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