Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 85% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 11 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 leaving the last ∠3° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♊ Gemini later.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 4 days on 30 December 2003 at 10:03.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2004 after 4 days on 7 January 2004 at 15:40.
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 9.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1769" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 11 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 49 of Meeus index or 1002 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 22 minutes and it is 51 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. 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 1 hour and 22 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 47 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 ∠15.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠33.9°.
Moon is at apogee at 20:19 about 12 days since last perigee on 22 December 2003 at 11:53 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 16 days until point of next perigee on 19 January 2004 at 19:25 in ♐ Sagittarius.
This apogee Moon is 405 707 km (252 095 mi) away from Earth. It is 299 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 1 002 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
1 day after ascending node on 2 January 2004 at 20:11 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 13 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 16 January 2004 at 21:08 in ♏ Scorpio.
10 days since the last southern standstill on 23 December 2003 at 20:12 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.044° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.031° at the point of next northern standstill on 6 January 2004 at 21:36 in ♋ Cancer.
1 day since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 4 days on 7 January 2004 at 15:40 in ♋ Cancer 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
