Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 81% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 10 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 ∠6° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 3 days on 14 April 2016 at 03:59.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2016 after 4 days on 22 April 2016 at 05:24.
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 5.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1804" and ∠1911".
The Moon is 10 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 201 of Meeus index or 1154 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 6 minutes and it is 36 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 4 hours and 38 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 31 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 ∠355.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠10.8°.
9 days since point of perigee on 7 April 2016 at 17:36 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 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 21 April 2016 at 16:05 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 397 385 km (246 924 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 4 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 352 km (252 495 mi).
11 days after descending node on 5 April 2016 at 17:27 in ♓ Pisces 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 18 April 2016 at 18:04 in ♍ Virgo.
4 days since the last northern standstill on 12 April 2016 at 12:12 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.288° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.382° at the point of next southern standstill on 27 April 2016 at 04:44 in ♑ Capricorn.
25 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♍ Virgo the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 4 days on 22 April 2016 at 05:24 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