Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 51% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 13 February 2004 at 13:40 UTC.
The moon rises at midnight and sets at noon. It is visible to the south in the morning.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠23° of ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2004 after 22 days on 6 March 2004 at 23:14.
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 1.3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1968" and ∠1943".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last 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°.
12 days since point of apogee on 31 January 2004 at 14:00 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 16 February 2004 at 07:34 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 364 204 km (226 306 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 2 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 368 320 km (228 863 mi).
1 day after descending node on 12 February 2004 at 21:44 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 26 February 2004 at 00:15 in ♉ Taurus.
10 days since the last northern standstill on 3 February 2004 at 04:10 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.131° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠-27.229° at the point of next southern standstill on 16 February 2004 at 13:51 in ♐ Sagittarius.
14 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 6 days on 20 February 2004 at 09:18 in ♓ Pisces 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