Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 71% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 20 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 passing about ∠20° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 4 days on 29 April 2056 at 18:31.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2056 after 24 days on 29 May 2056 at 01:58.
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 0.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1901" and ∠1902".
The Moon is 20 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 696 of Meeus index or 1649 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 16 minutes and it is 1 hour and 18 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 3 hours and 32 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 31 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 ∠172.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠196°.
4 days since point of perigee on 29 April 2056 at 14:48 in ♏ Scorpio 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 12 May 2056 at 22:15 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 377 064 km (234 297 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 8 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 547 km (252 617 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♑ Capricorn at 20:18 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 19 May 2056 at 11:10 in ♋ Cancer.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 3 May 2056 at 22:04 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-21.812° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 14 days to face maximum declination of ∠21.920° at the point of next northern standstill on 18 May 2056 at 13:40 in ♋ Cancer.
12 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♋ Cancer the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 10 days on 14 May 2056 at 16:06 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