Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 6% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 2 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 ∠24° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 2 days on 15 May 2018 at 11:48.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2018 after 12 days on 29 May 2018 at 14:20.
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 3.3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1961" and ∠1897".
The Moon is 2 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 227 of Meeus index or 1180 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 7 hours and 55 minutes and it is 50 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 4 hours and 49 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 20 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 ∠321.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠340.3°.
Moon is at perigee at 21:06 about 11 days since last apogee on 6 May 2018 at 00:35 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 16 days until point of next apogee on 2 June 2018 at 16:34 in ♑ Capricorn.
This perigee Moon is 363 777 km (226 041 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 269 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 6 579 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
10 days after descending node on 7 May 2018 at 10:24 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 20 May 2018 at 13:13 in ♌ Leo.
12 days 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 day to face maximum declination of ∠20.652° at the point of next northern standstill on 18 May 2018 at 15:02 in ♋ Cancer.
23 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 12 days on 29 May 2018 at 14:20 in ♐ Sagittarius 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