First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 60% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 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 passing about ∠11° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2004 after 6 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 8 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°.
Moon is at perigee at 21:12 about 14 days since last apogee on 8 September 2004 at 02:42 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 13 days until point of next apogee on 5 October 2004 at 22:10 in ♋ Cancer.
This perigee Moon is 369 600 km (229 659 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's farthest perigee of 2004. It is 7 092 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 756 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
4 days after descending node on 17 September 2004 at 14:51 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 30 September 2004 at 13:30 in ♈ Aries.
At 02:36 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-27.958°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠28.020° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 5 October 2004 at 17:37.
19 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 6 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