Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 88% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 11 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 leaving the last ∠1° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♎ Libra later.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 4 days on 25 April 2015 at 23:55.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2015 after 3 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 7.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1770" and ∠1905".
The Moon is 11 days young and navigating from the first to the middle 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°.
1 day since point of apogee on 29 April 2015 at 03:55 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 14 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 15 May 2015 at 00:23 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 404 983 km (251 645 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 14 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 366 024 km (227 437 mi).
12 days after descending node on 17 April 2015 at 13:07 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 1 May 2015 at 09:50 in ♎ Libra.
7 days since the last northern standstill on 22 April 2015 at 23:26 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.280° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.343° at the point of next southern standstill on 7 May 2015 at 13:39 in ♐ Sagittarius.
26 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 3 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