Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 32% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 23 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 ∠16° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 1 day on 13 March 2004 at 21:01.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2004 after 20 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 1.5% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1957" and ∠1929".
The Moon is 23 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
3 days 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 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 27 March 2004 at 07:02 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 366 206 km (227 550 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 11 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 520 km (251 357 mi).
4 days after descending node on 10 March 2004 at 23:05 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 24 March 2004 at 04:55 in ♉ Taurus.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 14 March 2004 at 19:20 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.445° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 13 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.541° at the point of next northern standstill on 28 March 2004 at 19:53 in ♋ Cancer.
18 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 5 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