Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 22% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 4 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 passing about ∠6° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 3 days on 26 April 2017 at 12:16.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2017 after 10 days on 10 May 2017 at 21:43.
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% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1962" and ∠1904".
The Moon is 4 days 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°.
2 days since point of perigee on 27 April 2017 at 16:18 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 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 12 May 2017 at 19:51 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 365 312 km (226 994 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 12 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 212 km (252 408 mi).
8 days after descending node on 21 April 2017 at 22:30 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 4 May 2017 at 10:42 in ♍ Virgo.
At 13:33 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠19.187°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-19.302° at the point of next southern standstill in ♑ Capricorn on 14 May 2017 at 20:29.
23 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 10 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