Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 4% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 27 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 passing about ∠21° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 4 days on 29 May 2016 at 12:12.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2016 after 16 days on 20 June 2016 at 11:02.
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 3.9% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1967" and ∠1891".
The Moon is 27 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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 perigee at 10:55 about 15 days since last apogee on 18 May 2016 at 22:06 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next apogee on 15 June 2016 at 12:00 in ♎ Libra.
This perigee Moon is 361 142 km (224 403 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 366 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 9 214 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
4 days after descending node on 30 May 2016 at 04:45 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 11 June 2016 at 22:20 in ♍ Virgo.
10 days since the last southern standstill on 24 May 2016 at 11:16 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.539° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.575° at the point of next northern standstill on 6 June 2016 at 09:13 in ♋ Cancer.
18 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 1 day on 5 June 2016 at 03:00 in ♊ Gemini 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