Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 67% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 9 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 ∠15° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 1 day on 13 May 2016 at 17:02.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2016 after 6 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 5.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1796" and ∠1898".
The Moon is 9 days young and navigating from the first to the middle 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°.
9 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 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 18 May 2016 at 22:06 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 399 028 km (247 945 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 3 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 934 km (252 236 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♍ Virgo at 20:39 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next descending node later on 30 May 2016 at 04:45 in ♓ Pisces.
5 days since the last northern standstill on 9 May 2016 at 21:54 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.447° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.539° at the point of next southern standstill on 24 May 2016 at 11:16 in ♑ Capricorn.
At 20:39 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 6 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