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 9 June 2004 at 20:02 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 ∠15° of ♓ Pisces tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Buck Moon of July 2004 after 22 days on 2 July 2004 at 11:09.
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 0.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1887" and ∠1890".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 54 of Meeus index or 1007 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 35 minutes and it is 38 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2004. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decrease with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at perigee (∠0° or ∠360°).
The length of the current synodic month is 2 hours and 51 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 12 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 ∠158.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠181.6°.
5 days since point of perigee on 3 June 2004 at 13:10 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 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 17 June 2004 at 16:02 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 379 767 km (235 976 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 8 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 575 km (252 634 mi).
8 days after descending node on 1 June 2004 at 01:20 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 13 June 2004 at 22:49 in ♉ Taurus.
4 days since the last southern standstill on 4 June 2004 at 17:29 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.569° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.532° at the point of next northern standstill on 18 June 2004 at 15:35 in ♋ Cancer.
22 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 8 days on 17 June 2004 at 20:27 in ♊ Gemini 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