First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 57% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 20 October 2004 at 21:59 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 ∠6° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2004 after 6 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 1.7% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1961" and ∠1928".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 59 of Meeus index or 1012 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 39 minutes and it is 37 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 5 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 4 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 ∠302.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠327.5°.
3 days since point of perigee on 18 October 2004 at 00:03 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 2 November 2004 at 18:09 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 365 451 km (227 081 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 12 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 999 km (251 655 mi).
6 days after descending node on 14 October 2004 at 21:47 in ♎ Libra 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 27 October 2004 at 21:41 in ♈ Aries.
2 days since the last southern standstill on 19 October 2004 at 08:00 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.048° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.042° at the point of next northern standstill on 2 November 2004 at 01:32 in ♋ Cancer.
20 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♈ Aries the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 28 October 2004 at 03:07 in ♉ Taurus 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