Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 35% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 6 days young.
The moon rises in the morning and sets in the evening. It is visible toward the southwest 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 ∠19° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 6 days on 20 February 2004 at 09:18.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2004 after 9 days on 6 March 2004 at 23:14.
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 8.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1776" and ∠1938".
The Moon is 6 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 51 of Meeus index or 1004 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 24 minutes and it is 1 hour and 16 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 40 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 23 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠59.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠93.6°.
10 days since point of perigee on 16 February 2004 at 07:34 in ♑ Capricorn 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 28 February 2004 at 10:45 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 403 569 km (250 766 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next day until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 259 km (251 195 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♉ Taurus at 00:15 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next descending node later on 10 March 2004 at 23:05 in ♏ Scorpio.
9 days since the last southern standstill on 16 February 2004 at 13:51 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.229° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.341° at the point of next northern standstill on 1 March 2004 at 11:47 in ♋ Cancer.
At 00:15 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 9 days on 6 March 2004 at 23:14 in ♍ Virgo 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