Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 81% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 19 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 ∠9° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 3 days on 4 May 2004 at 20:33.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2004 after 25 days on 3 June 2004 at 04:20.
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 3.5% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1968" and ∠1901".
The Moon is 19 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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°.
2 days since point of perigee on 6 May 2004 at 04:29 in ♐ Sagittarius 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 21 May 2004 at 12:02 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 364 201 km (226 304 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 13 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 262 km (252 440 mi).
3 days after descending node on 4 May 2004 at 15:00 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 9 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 17 May 2004 at 18:17 in ♉ Taurus.
At 08:08 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-27.623°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠27.595° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 22 May 2004 at 10:05.
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 10 days on 19 May 2004 at 04:52 in ♉ Taurus 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