Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 72% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 9 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 ∠12° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 2 days on 4 May 2044 at 10:28.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2044 after 5 days on 12 May 2044 at 00:16.
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 0.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1897" and ∠1901".
The Moon is 9 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 548 of Meeus index or 1501 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 7 hours and 57 minutes and it is 1 hour and 12 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decrease with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at perigee (∠0° or ∠360°).
The length of the current synodic month is 4 hours and 47 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 22 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 ∠328.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠345.6°.
6 days since point of perigee on 29 April 2044 at 18:30 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 15 May 2044 at 11:19 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 377 754 km (234 725 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 8 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 736 km (252 113 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♍ Virgo at 23:24 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 15 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 21 May 2044 at 13:03 in ♓ Pisces.
5 days since the last northern standstill on 1 May 2044 at 05:01 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.450° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.366° at the point of next southern standstill on 15 May 2044 at 00:44 in ♑ Capricorn.
12 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♓ Pisces the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 5 days on 12 May 2044 at 00:16 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