Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 65% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 20 days old.
The moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It is visible to the southwest and it is high in the sky after midnight.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is leaving the last ∠1° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♒ Aquarius later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 6 days on 30 April 2018 at 00:58.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2018 after 23 days on 29 May 2018 at 14:20.
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 7.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1769" and ∠1902".
The Moon is 20 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 226 of Meeus index or 1179 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 51 minutes and it is 1 hour and 56 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 hours and 53 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 16 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 ∠296.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠321.7°.
Moon is at apogee at 00:35 about 15 days since last perigee on 20 April 2018 at 14:44 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next perigee on 17 May 2018 at 21:06 in ♊ Gemini.
This apogee Moon is 404 458 km (251 319 mi) away from Earth. It is 950 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 251 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
12 days after ascending node on 23 April 2018 at 12:19 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 7 May 2018 at 10:24 in ♒ Aquarius.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 4 May 2018 at 23:00 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-20.562° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠20.652° at the point of next northern standstill on 18 May 2018 at 15:02 in ♋ Cancer.
12 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 8 days on 15 May 2018 at 11:48 in ♉ Taurus 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