Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 15% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 4 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 ∠15° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 4 days on 17 July 2004 at 11:24.
Next Full Moon is the Buck Moon of July 2004 after 10 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 2.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1845" and ∠1889".
The Moon is 4 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 56 of Meeus index or 1009 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 1 minute and it is 55 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 1 hour and 16 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 47 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 ∠205.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠234°.
6 days since point of apogee on 14 July 2004 at 21:08 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 30 July 2004 at 06:25 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 388 576 km (241 450 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 8 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 360 326 km (223 896 mi).
10 days after ascending node on 11 July 2004 at 00:59 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 25 July 2004 at 11:29 in ♏ Scorpio.
5 days since the last northern standstill on 15 July 2004 at 20:46 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.543° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠-27.607° at the point of next southern standstill on 29 July 2004 at 13:12 in ♐ Sagittarius.
10 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 10 days on 31 July 2004 at 18:05 in ♒ Aquarius 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