Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 99% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 13 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 passing first ∠3° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 7 days on 30 December 2003 at 10:03.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2004 after 1 day 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 9.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1778" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 13 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°.
2 days since point of apogee on 3 January 2004 at 20:19 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 13 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 19 January 2004 at 19:25 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 403 114 km (250 483 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 13 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 362 768 km (225 414 mi).
3 days after ascending node on 2 January 2004 at 20:11 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 16 January 2004 at 21:08 in ♏ Scorpio.
At 21:36 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠27.031°. This is the year's northernmost lunar standstill of 2004. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-27.072° at the point of next southern standstill in ♑ Capricorn on 20 January 2004 at 06:17.
3 days 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 1 day 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