Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 98% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 13 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 ∠15° of ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 6 days on 15 May 2043 at 21:05.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2043 after 1 day on 23 May 2043 at 23:37.
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 7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1895".
The Moon is 13 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 536 of Meeus index or 1489 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 7 hours and 14 minutes and it is 2 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2043. 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 5 hours and 30 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 39 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 ∠0.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠15.9°.
Moon is at apogee at 14:46 about 13 days since last perigee on 9 May 2043 at 02:32 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 14 days until point of next perigee on 6 June 2043 at 11:59 in ♊ Gemini.
This apogee Moon is 406 276 km (252 448 mi) away from Earth. It is 868 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 433 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
3 days after descending node on 19 May 2043 at 08:03 in ♎ Libra 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 2 June 2043 at 17:02 in ♓ Pisces.
10 days since the last northern standstill on 12 May 2043 at 00:03 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.531° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.459° at the point of next southern standstill on 26 May 2043 at 08:52 in ♑ Capricorn.
16 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♈ Aries the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 23 May 2043 at 23:37 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