Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 48% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 9 July 2004 at 07:34 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 ∠20° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Buck Moon of July 2004 after 22 days on 31 July 2004 at 18:05.
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 3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1831" and ∠1887".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 55 of Meeus index or 1008 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 57 minutes and it is 57 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. 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 13 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 50 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 ∠181.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠205.1°.
7 days since point of perigee on 1 July 2004 at 23:00 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 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 14 July 2004 at 21:08 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 391 465 km (243 245 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 5 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 192 km (252 396 mi).
11 days after descending node on 28 June 2004 at 08:37 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 11 July 2004 at 00:59 in ♉ Taurus.
7 days since the last southern standstill on 2 July 2004 at 03:43 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.538° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.543° at the point of next northern standstill on 15 July 2004 at 20:46 in ♋ Cancer.
25 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 17 July 2004 at 11:24 in ♋ Cancer 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