Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 12% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 3 days 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 ∠5° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 3 days on 11 May 2021 at 19:00.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2021 after 10 days on 26 May 2021 at 11:14.
There is low ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at big angle, so their combined tidal force is weak.
Lunar disc appears visually 5.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1793" and ∠1898".
The Moon is 3 days 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°.
3 days 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 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 26 May 2021 at 01:52 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 399 699 km (248 361 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 10 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 310 km (222 022 mi).
2 days after ascending node on 13 May 2021 at 10:29 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 26 May 2021 at 19:38 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 22:25 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠25.640°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-25.647° at the point of next southern standstill in ♑ Capricorn on 28 May 2021 at 19:21.
2 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 10 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