Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 85% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 18 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 ∠4° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♑ Capricorn later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 3 days on 27 April 2040 at 02:38.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2040 after 25 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 3.3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1968" and ∠1904".
The Moon is 18 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°.
Moon is at perigee at 04:22 about 11 days since last apogee on 18 April 2040 at 07:16 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 15 days until point of next apogee on 16 May 2040 at 01:01 in ♋ Cancer.
This perigee Moon is 365 739 km (227 260 mi) away from Earth. It is 3 231 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 4 617 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
1 day after descending node on 28 April 2040 at 22:56 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 12 May 2040 at 04:05 in ♊ Gemini.
12 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 day to face maximum declination of ∠-26.155° at the point of next southern standstill on 1 May 2040 at 10:16 in ♑ Capricorn.
15 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 10 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