Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 1% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 1 day 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 passing about ∠21° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 1 day on 26 April 2017 at 12:16.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2017 after 13 days on 10 May 2017 at 21:43.
There is medium ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at very acute angle, so their combined tidal force is moderate.
Lunar disc appears visually 3.2% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1968" and ∠1906".
The Moon is 1 day young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 214 of Meeus index or 1167 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 7 hours and 28 minutes and it is 42 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decrease with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at perigee (∠0° or ∠360°).
The length of the current synodic month is 5 hours and 16 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 53 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 ∠340.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠356°.
Moon is at perigee at 16:18 about 12 days since last apogee on 15 April 2017 at 10:05 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 15 days until point of next apogee on 12 May 2017 at 19:51 in ♐ Sagittarius.
This perigee Moon is 359 325 km (223 274 mi) away from Earth. It is 3 183 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 11 031 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
5 days after descending node on 21 April 2017 at 22:30 in ♒ Aquarius 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 4 May 2017 at 10:42 in ♍ Virgo.
9 days since the last southern standstill on 17 April 2017 at 13:12 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-19.095° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠19.187° at the point of next northern standstill on 30 April 2017 at 13:33 in ♊ Gemini.
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 13 days on 10 May 2017 at 21:43 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