Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 3% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 1 day 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 ∠11° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 1 day on 11 May 2021 at 19:00.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2021 after 12 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 6.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1773" and ∠1899".
The Moon is 1 day young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 264 of Meeus index or 1217 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 53 minutes and it is 1 hour and 29 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 3 hours and 9 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 54 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 ∠178.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠202.3°.
1 day since point of apogee on 11 May 2021 at 21:54 in ♉ Taurus 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 26 May 2021 at 01:52 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 404 349 km (251 251 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 12 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 310 km (222 022 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♊ Gemini at 10:29 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next descending node later on 26 May 2021 at 19:38 in ♐ Sagittarius.
12 days since the last southern standstill on 1 May 2021 at 09:37 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-25.591° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠25.640° at the point of next northern standstill on 15 May 2021 at 22:25 in ♋ Cancer.
At 10:29 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 12 days on 26 May 2021 at 11:14 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