Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 99% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 13 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 passing first ∠3° of ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 5 days on 30 April 2020 at 20:38.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2020 after 1 day on 7 May 2020 at 10:45.
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 3.3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1966" and ∠1901".
The Moon is 13 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 251 of Meeus index or 1204 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 13 minutes and it is 2 hours and 10 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 29 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 34 minutes 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 ∠201.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠229.8°.
Moon is at perigee at 03:03 about 15 days since last apogee on 20 April 2020 at 19:01 in ♓ Pisces the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next apogee on 18 May 2020 at 07:45 in ♈ Aries.
This perigee Moon is 359 656 km (223 480 mi) away from Earth. It is 2 852 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 10 700 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
8 days after ascending node on 27 April 2020 at 17:54 in ♊ Gemini 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 10 May 2020 at 09:01 in ♐ Sagittarius.
7 days since the last northern standstill on 28 April 2020 at 15:23 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠23.935° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠-23.998° at the point of next southern standstill on 11 May 2020 at 06:13 in ♑ Capricorn.
8 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 7 May 2020 at 10:45 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