Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 29% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 5 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 ∠11° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 5 days on 19 April 2004 at 13:21.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2004 after 9 days on 4 May 2004 at 20:33.
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 7.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1775" and ∠1907".
The Moon is 5 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 53 of Meeus index or 1006 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 31 minutes and it is 4 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 2 hours and 47 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 16 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 ∠129.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠158.3°.
1 day since point of apogee on 24 April 2004 at 00:26 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 6 May 2004 at 04:29 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 403 922 km (250 985 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 10 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 359 812 km (223 577 mi).
5 days after ascending node on 20 April 2004 at 11:40 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 9 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 4 May 2004 at 15:00 in ♏ Scorpio.
At 03:32 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠27.628°. Over the upcoming 12 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-27.623° at the point of next southern standstill in ♑ Capricorn on 8 May 2004 at 08:08.
5 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 9 days on 4 May 2004 at 20:33 in ♏ Scorpio 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