Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 10% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 3 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 leaving the last ∠3° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♋ Cancer later.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 2 days on 6 May 2016 at 19:30.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2016 after 12 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 1.4% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1926" and ∠1900".
The Moon is 3 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 202 of Meeus index or 1155 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 7 hours and 30 minutes and it is 31 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2016. 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 5 hours and 14 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 55 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 ∠10.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠27.6°.
3 days since point of perigee on 6 May 2016 at 04:14 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 18 May 2016 at 22:06 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 372 088 km (231 205 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 9 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 934 km (252 236 mi).
6 days after descending node on 3 May 2016 at 01:27 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 15 May 2016 at 20:39 in ♍ Virgo.
At 21:54 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠18.447°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-18.539° at the point of next southern standstill in ♑ Capricorn on 24 May 2016 at 11:16.
20 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 12 days on 21 May 2016 at 21:15 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