Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 4% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 27 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 first ∠3° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 11 May 2015 at 10:36.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2015 after 17 days on 2 June 2015 at 16:19.
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 2.4% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1944" and ∠1898".
The Moon is 27 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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 perigee on 15 May 2015 at 00:23 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 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 26 May 2015 at 22:12 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 368 728 km (229 117 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 10 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 246 km (251 187 mi).
1 day after descending node on 14 May 2015 at 20:37 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 28 May 2015 at 14:40 in ♎ Libra.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 7 May 2015 at 13:39 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.343° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.389° at the point of next northern standstill on 20 May 2015 at 09:41 in ♊ Gemini.
15 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 1 day on 18 May 2015 at 04:13 in ♉ Taurus 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