Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 83% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 11 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 leaving the last ∠3° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♎ Libra later.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 3 days on 3 May 2017 at 02:47.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2017 after 4 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 3.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1838" and ∠1902".
The Moon is 11 days young and navigating from the first to the middle 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°.
8 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 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 12 May 2017 at 19:51 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 389 875 km (242 257 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 6 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 212 km (252 408 mi).
2 days after ascending node on 4 May 2017 at 10:42 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 19 May 2017 at 01:30 in ♒ Aquarius.
5 days since the last northern standstill on 30 April 2017 at 13:33 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠19.187° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠-19.302° at the point of next southern standstill on 14 May 2017 at 20:29 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 4 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