Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 2% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 28 days old.
The moon rises after midnight to early morning and sets in the afternoon. It is visible in the early morning low to the east.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠8° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 6 days on 7 April 2056 at 01:33.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2056 after 16 days on 29 April 2056 at 18:31.
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 7.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1777" and ∠1913".
The Moon is 28 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 695 of Meeus index or 1648 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 58 minutes and it is 42 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2056. 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 4 hours and 14 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 49 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 ∠147° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠172.8°.
12 days since point of perigee on 1 April 2056 at 03:57 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 15 April 2056 at 19:35 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 403 251 km (250 569 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 2 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 631 km (252 669 mi).
5 days after descending node on 7 April 2056 at 18:26 in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 22 April 2056 at 10:02 in ♋ Cancer.
6 days since the last southern standstill on 6 April 2056 at 13:41 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-21.566° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠21.717° at the point of next northern standstill on 21 April 2056 at 07:19 in ♋ Cancer.
18 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♋ Cancer the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 14 April 2056 at 23:50 in ♈ Aries 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