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 leaving the last ∠2° of ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♐ Sagittarius later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 27 April 2021 at 03:31.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2021 after 27 days on 26 May 2021 at 11:14.
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 3.5% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1972" and ∠1905".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 263 of Meeus index or 1216 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 29 minutes and it is 36 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2021. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
The length of the current synodic month is 3 hours and 45 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 18 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 ∠154.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠178.9°.
1 day since point of perigee on 27 April 2021 at 15:24 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 13 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 11 May 2021 at 21:54 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 363 395 km (225 803 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 13 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 512 km (252 595 mi).
12 days after ascending node on 16 April 2021 at 05:53 in ♊ Gemini 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 29 April 2021 at 09:18 in ♐ Sagittarius.
9 days since the last northern standstill on 18 April 2021 at 16:02 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠25.532° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠-25.591° at the point of next southern standstill on 1 May 2021 at 09:37 in ♑ Capricorn.
12 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 13 days on 11 May 2021 at 19:00 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