Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 17% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 4 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 ∠21° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 3 days on 18 April 2015 at 18:57.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2015 after 11 days on 4 May 2015 at 03:42.
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 2.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1863" and ∠1909".
The Moon is 4 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 189 of Meeus index or 1142 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 16 minutes and it is 36 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2015. 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 28 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 41 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 ∠27.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠48.8°.
5 days since point of perigee on 17 April 2015 at 03:53 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 29 April 2015 at 03:55 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 384 694 km (239 038 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 6 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 085 km (251 708 mi).
4 days after descending node on 17 April 2015 at 13:07 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 1 May 2015 at 09:50 in ♎ Libra.
At 23:26 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠18.280°. Over the upcoming 15 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-18.343° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 7 May 2015 at 13:39.
18 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 11 days on 4 May 2015 at 03:42 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