Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 90% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 12 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 ∠21° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 4 days on 13 May 2016 at 17:02.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2016 after 3 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 7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1769" and ∠1896".
The Moon is 12 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°.
Moon is at apogee at 22:06 about 12 days since last perigee on 6 May 2016 at 04:14 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 15 days until point of next perigee on 3 June 2016 at 10:55 in ♉ Taurus.
This apogee Moon is 405 934 km (252 236 mi) away from Earth. It is 526 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 775 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
2 days after ascending node on 15 May 2016 at 20:39 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 30 May 2016 at 04:45 in ♓ Pisces.
8 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 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.539° at the point of next southern standstill on 24 May 2016 at 11:16 in ♑ Capricorn.
2 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♍ Virgo the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 3 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