First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 48% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 21 September 2004 at 15:54 UTC.
The moon rises at noon and sets at midnight. It is visible high in the southern sky in early evening.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is leaving the last ∠3° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♑ Capricorn later.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2004 after 7 days on 28 September 2004 at 13:09.
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 3.1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1972" and ∠1912".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 58 of Meeus index or 1011 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 19 minutes and it is 40 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 25 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 44 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠269.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠302.8°.
13 days since point of apogee on 8 September 2004 at 02:42 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 22 September 2004 at 21:12 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 363 497 km (225 867 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 600 km (229 659 mi).
3 days after descending node on 17 September 2004 at 14:51 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 9 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 30 September 2004 at 13:30 in ♈ Aries.
13 days since the last northern standstill on 8 September 2004 at 09:40 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.870° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-27.958° at the point of next southern standstill on 22 September 2004 at 02:36 in ♑ Capricorn.
18 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 28 September 2004 at 13:09 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