Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 29% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 5 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 ∠12° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 5 days on 21 April 2031 at 16:57.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2031 after 9 days on 7 May 2031 at 03:40.
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 7.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1906".
The Moon is 5 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 387 of Meeus index or 1340 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 20 minutes and it is 47 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 36 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 27 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 ∠106.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠139.8°.
Moon is at apogee at 10:30 about 15 days since last perigee on 11 April 2031 at 19:13 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next perigee on 9 May 2031 at 07:28 in ♐ Sagittarius.
This apogee Moon is 404 758 km (251 505 mi) away from Earth. It is 650 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 1 951 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
3 days after descending node on 23 April 2031 at 20:23 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 7 May 2031 at 22:55 in ♏ Scorpio.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 25 April 2031 at 12:37 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.107° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-21.092° at the point of next southern standstill on 9 May 2031 at 07:56 in ♐ Sagittarius.
16 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 9 days on 7 May 2031 at 03:40 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