Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 97% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 16 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 passing first ∠1° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 29 May 2018 at 14:20.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2018 after 27 days on 28 June 2018 at 04:53.
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 6.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1775" and ∠1892".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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°.
13 days since point of perigee on 17 May 2018 at 21:06 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 2 June 2018 at 16:34 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 403 827 km (250 926 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 2 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 316 km (251 852 mi).
10 days after ascending node on 20 May 2018 at 13:13 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 3 June 2018 at 12:39 in ♒ Aquarius.
12 days since the last northern standstill on 18 May 2018 at 15:02 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.652° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-20.727° at the point of next southern standstill on 1 June 2018 at 07:09 in ♑ Capricorn.
10 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 13 days on 13 June 2018 at 19:43 in ♊ Gemini 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