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 7 August 2004 at 22:01 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 ∠11° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2004 after 22 days on 30 August 2004 at 02:22.
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 4.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1804" and ∠1892".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last 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°.
8 days since point of perigee on 30 July 2004 at 06:25 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 11 August 2004 at 09:34 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 397 358 km (246 907 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 3 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 291 km (251 836 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♉ Taurus at 02:41 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next descending node later on 21 August 2004 at 12:11 in ♏ Scorpio.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 29 July 2004 at 13:12 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.607° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.674° at the point of next northern standstill on 12 August 2004 at 02:38 in ♋ Cancer.
At 02:41 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 8 days on 16 August 2004 at 01:24 in ♌ Leo 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