Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 84% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 18 days old.
The moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It is visible to the southwest and it is high in the sky after midnight.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is leaving the last ∠4° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♊ Gemini later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 3 days on 28 September 2004 at 13:09.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2004 after 25 days on 28 October 2004 at 03:07.
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 6.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1792" and ∠1918".
The Moon is 18 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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°.
9 days since point of perigee on 22 September 2004 at 21:12 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 5 October 2004 at 22:10 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 400 012 km (248 556 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 3 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 328 km (251 238 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 30 September 2004 at 13:30 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 14 October 2004 at 21:47 in ♎ Libra.
10 days since the last southern standstill on 22 September 2004 at 02:36 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.958° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.020° at the point of next northern standstill on 5 October 2004 at 17:37 in ♊ Gemini.
1 day since the beginning of this draconic month in ♈ Aries the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 11 days on 14 October 2004 at 02:48 in ♎ Libra 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