Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 2% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 28 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 ∠17° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 6 days on 14 May 2020 at 14:03.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2020 after 15 days on 5 June 2020 at 19:12.
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% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1785" and ∠1895".
The Moon is 28 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
3 days since point of apogee on 18 May 2020 at 07:45 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 3 June 2020 at 03:36 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 401 569 km (249 523 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 12 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 364 366 km (226 407 mi).
11 days after descending node on 10 May 2020 at 09:01 in ♐ Sagittarius 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 24 May 2020 at 21:34 in ♊ Gemini.
10 days since the last southern standstill on 11 May 2020 at 06:13 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-23.998° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠24.055° at the point of next northern standstill on 25 May 2020 at 21:16 in ♋ Cancer.
23 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 22 May 2020 at 17:39 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