Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 85% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 18 days old.
The moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It is visible to the southwest and it is high in the sky after midnight.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠6° of ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 3 days on 6 March 2004 at 23:14.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2004 after 25 days on 5 April 2004 at 11:03.
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% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1950" and ∠1931".
The Moon is 18 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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°.
11 days since point of apogee on 28 February 2004 at 10:45 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 12 March 2004 at 03:37 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 367 513 km (228 362 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 511 km (229 603 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♏ Scorpio at 23:05 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 24 March 2004 at 04:55 in ♉ Taurus.
9 days since the last northern standstill on 1 March 2004 at 11:47 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.341° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠-27.445° at the point of next southern standstill on 14 March 2004 at 19:20 in ♐ Sagittarius.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 10 days on 20 March 2004 at 22:41 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