Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 97% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 16 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 leaving the last ∠3° of ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♐ Sagittarius later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 27 April 2040 at 02:38.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2040 after 27 days on 26 May 2040 at 11:47.
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 1.8% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1940" and ∠1905".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 498 of Meeus index or 1451 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 28 minutes and it is 1 hour and 7 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 44 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 19 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 ∠86° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠122.1°.
10 days since point of apogee on 18 April 2040 at 07:16 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 30 April 2040 at 04:22 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 369 501 km (229 597 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 365 739 km (227 260 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♏ Scorpio at 22:56 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 12 May 2040 at 04:05 in ♊ Gemini.
10 days since the last northern standstill on 17 April 2040 at 20:06 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠26.101° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠-26.155° at the point of next southern standstill on 1 May 2040 at 10:16 in ♑ Capricorn.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 12 days on 11 May 2040 at 03:28 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