First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 62% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 29 January 2004 at 06:03 UTC.
The moon rises at noon and sets at midnight. It is visible high in the southern sky in early evening.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠23° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2004 after 6 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 9.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1771" and ∠1948".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 50 of Meeus index or 1003 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 13 minutes and it is 1 hour and 11 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 31 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 38 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 ∠33.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠59.1°.
10 days 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 day until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 31 January 2004 at 14:00 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 404 626 km (251 423 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next day until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 807 km (251 535 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 29 January 2004 at 22:07 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 12 February 2004 at 21:44 in ♏ Scorpio.
10 days since the last southern standstill on 20 January 2004 at 06:17 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.072° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.131° at the point of next northern standstill on 3 February 2004 at 04:10 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 6 days on 6 February 2004 at 08:47 in ♌ Leo 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