Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 8% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 26 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 ∠4° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♑ Capricorn later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 4 days on 15 January 2004 at 04:46.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2004 after 17 days on 6 February 2004 at 08:47.
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 0.9% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1968" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 26 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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 perigee at 19:25 about 15 days since last apogee on 3 January 2004 at 20:19 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next apogee on 31 January 2004 at 14:00 in ♊ Gemini.
This perigee Moon is 362 768 km (225 414 mi) away from Earth. It is 260 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 7 588 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
2 days after descending node on 16 January 2004 at 21:08 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 29 January 2004 at 22:07 in ♉ Taurus.
12 days since the last northern standstill on 6 January 2004 at 21:36 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.031° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-27.072° at the point of next southern standstill on 20 January 2004 at 06:17 in ♑ Capricorn.
16 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 2 days on 21 January 2004 at 21:05 in ♑ Capricorn 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