Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 30% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 24 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 ∠14° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 2 days on 8 April 2018 at 07:18.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2018 after 19 days on 30 April 2018 at 00:58.
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 7.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1779" and ∠1915".
The Moon is 24 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 225 of Meeus index or 1178 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 46 minutes and it is 2 hours and 55 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 2 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 7 hours and 1 minute shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠262.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠296.5°.
2 days since point of apogee on 8 April 2018 at 05:32 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 20 April 2018 at 14:44 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 402 867 km (250 330 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 10 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 368 713 km (229 108 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♒ Aquarius at 08:09 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 23 April 2018 at 12:19 in ♌ Leo.
2 days since the last southern standstill on 7 April 2018 at 14:37 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-20.320° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠20.445° at the point of next northern standstill on 21 April 2018 at 07:38 in ♋ Cancer.
14 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 5 days on 16 April 2018 at 01:57 in ♈ Aries 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