Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 19% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 25 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 ∠6° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 2 days on 13 February 2004 at 13:40.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2004 after 19 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 1.1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1963" and ∠1942".
The Moon is 25 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
Moon is at perigee at 07:34 about 15 days since last apogee on 31 January 2004 at 14:00 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next apogee on 28 February 2004 at 10:45 in ♊ Gemini.
This perigee Moon is 368 320 km (228 863 mi) away from Earth. It is 5 812 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 2 036 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
3 days after descending node on 12 February 2004 at 21:44 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 26 February 2004 at 00:15 in ♉ Taurus.
At 13:51 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-27.229°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠27.341° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 1 March 2004 at 11:47.
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 3 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
