Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 84% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 11 days young.
The moon rises in the afternoon and sets after midnight to early morning. It is visible to the southeast in early evening and it is up for most of the night.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠13° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 4 days on 15 May 2024 at 11:48.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2024 after 4 days on 23 May 2024 at 13:53.
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 6.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1772" and ∠1896".
The Moon is 11 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 301 of Meeus index or 1254 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 16 minutes and it is 1 hour and 4 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 3 hours and 28 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 41 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 ∠36° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠60.7°.
1 day since point of apogee on 17 May 2024 at 19:00 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 13 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 2 June 2024 at 07:23 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 404 426 km (251 299 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 13 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 368 108 km (228 732 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♎ Libra at 16:35 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 2 June 2024 at 03:08 in ♈ Aries.
8 days since the last northern standstill on 11 May 2024 at 07:45 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.465° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.401° at the point of next southern standstill on 25 May 2024 at 19:58 in ♐ Sagittarius.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♈ Aries the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 4 days on 23 May 2024 at 13:53 in ♏ Scorpio 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