Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 16% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 25 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 leaving the last ∠3° of ♓ Pisces tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♈ Aries later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 3 days on 30 April 2016 at 03:29.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2016 after 18 days on 21 May 2016 at 21:15.
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 2.9% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1959" and ∠1903".
The Moon is 25 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
11 days since point of apogee on 21 April 2016 at 16:05 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 6 May 2016 at 04:14 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 365 969 km (227 403 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 2 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 828 km (222 344 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♓ Pisces at 01:27 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 12 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 15 May 2016 at 20:39 in ♍ Virgo.
6 days since the last southern standstill on 27 April 2016 at 04:44 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.382° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.447° at the point of next northern standstill on 9 May 2016 at 21:54 in ♊ Gemini.
14 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 3 days on 6 May 2016 at 19:30 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