Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 91% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 12 days young.
The moon rises in the afternoon and sets after midnight to early morning. It is visible to the southeast in early evening and it is up for most of the night.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is leaving the last ∠1° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♒ Aquarius later.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 4 days on 23 August 2004 at 10:12.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2004 after 2 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 3.2% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1962" and ∠1900".
The Moon is 12 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 57 of Meeus index or 1010 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 5 minutes and it is 46 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 21 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 42 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 ∠234° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠269.4°.
Moon is at perigee at 05:37 about 15 days since last apogee on 11 August 2004 at 09:34 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next apogee on 8 September 2004 at 02:42 in ♋ Cancer.
This perigee Moon is 365 106 km (226 866 mi) away from Earth. It is 2 598 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 5 250 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
5 days after descending node on 21 August 2004 at 12:11 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 3 September 2004 at 06:34 in ♉ Taurus.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 25 August 2004 at 20:48 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.776° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.870° at the point of next northern standstill on 8 September 2004 at 09:40 in ♋ Cancer.
20 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 2 days on 30 August 2004 at 02:22 in ♓ Pisces 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
