Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 4% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 27 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 leaving the last ∠1° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♉ Taurus later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 6 May 2056 at 13:30.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2056 after 16 days on 29 May 2056 at 01:58.
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 7.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1769" and ∠1899".
The Moon is 27 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
Moon is at apogee at 22:15 about 13 days since last perigee on 29 April 2056 at 14:48 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 15 days until point of next perigee on 28 May 2056 at 00:00 in ♏ Scorpio.
This apogee Moon is 406 547 km (252 617 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 139 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 162 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
7 days after descending node on 4 May 2056 at 20:18 in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 19 May 2056 at 11:10 in ♋ Cancer.
8 days 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 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠21.920° at the point of next northern standstill on 18 May 2056 at 13:40 in ♋ Cancer.
20 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 2 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