Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 63% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 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 passing about ∠6° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 5 days on 5 May 2023 at 17:34.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2023 after 23 days on 4 June 2023 at 03:42.
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 3.7% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1972" and ∠1900".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 288 of Meeus index or 1241 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 41 minutes and it is 1 hour and 3 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. 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 1 hour and 3 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 6 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠59.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠92.6°.
Moon is at perigee at 04:57 about 12 days since last apogee on 28 April 2023 at 06:43 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 14 days until point of next apogee on 26 May 2023 at 01:39 in ♌ Leo.
This perigee Moon is 369 345 km (229 500 mi) away from Earth. It is 6 837 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 1 011 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
6 days after descending node on 4 May 2023 at 21:57 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 17 May 2023 at 19:36 in ♈ Aries.
2 days since the last southern standstill on 9 May 2023 at 09:01 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.937° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.903° at the point of next northern standstill on 22 May 2023 at 14:08 in ♊ Gemini.
21 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 8 days on 19 May 2023 at 15:53 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