Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 3% 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 passing about ∠11° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 15 January 2004 at 04:46.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2004 after 16 days on 6 February 2004 at 08:47.
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 0.3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1957" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 27 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°.
1 day since point of perigee on 19 January 2004 at 19:25 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 31 January 2004 at 14:00 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 366 356 km (227 643 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 11 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 807 km (251 535 mi).
3 days after descending node on 16 January 2004 at 21:08 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 9 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 29 January 2004 at 22:07 in ♉ Taurus.
At 06:17 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-27.072°. This is the year's southernmost lunar standstill of 2004. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠27.131° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 3 February 2004 at 04:10.
17 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 1 day 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