Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 97% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 16 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 ∠24° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 22 May 2081 at 20:26.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2081 after 27 days on 21 June 2081 at 07:32.
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 3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1837" and ∠1894".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 1006 of Meeus index or 1959 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 53 minutes and it is 2 hours and 10 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 1 hour and 51 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 18 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 ∠265.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠298.3°.
6 days since point of perigee on 17 May 2081 at 14:15 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 30 May 2081 at 09:21 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 390 103 km (242 399 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 5 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 064 km (251 074 mi).
6 days after descending node on 17 May 2081 at 20:00 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 31 May 2081 at 13:42 in ♓ Pisces.
At 19:52 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-28.376°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠28.340° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 8 June 2081 at 04:25.
20 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♓ Pisces the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 13 days on 7 June 2081 at 09:01 in ♊ Gemini 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