Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 54% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 13 March 2004 at 21:01 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 ∠18° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2004 after 22 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 2.2% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1930".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through 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°.
1 day since point of perigee on 12 March 2004 at 03:37 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 13 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 27 March 2004 at 07:02 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 363 338 km (225 768 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 13 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 520 km (251 357 mi).
2 days after descending node on 10 March 2004 at 23:05 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 24 March 2004 at 04:55 in ♉ Taurus.
12 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 day to face maximum declination of ∠-27.445° at the point of next southern standstill on 14 March 2004 at 19:20 in ♐ Sagittarius.
16 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 7 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