Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 55% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 5 December 2004 at 00:53 UTC.
The moon rises at midnight and sets at noon. It is visible to the south in the morning.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠7° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2004 after 22 days on 26 December 2004 at 15:06.
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 7.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1808" and ∠1947".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 60 of Meeus index or 1013 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 2 minutes and it is 28 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 42 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 27 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 ∠327.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠345.8°.
4 days since point of apogee on 30 November 2004 at 11:25 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 12 December 2004 at 21:30 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 396 424 km (246 326 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 8 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 986 km (222 442 mi).
10 days after ascending node on 24 November 2004 at 04:05 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 8 December 2004 at 16:57 in ♎ Libra.
5 days since the last northern standstill on 29 November 2004 at 08:28 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.963° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠-27.935° at the point of next southern standstill on 13 December 2004 at 00:27 in ♑ Capricorn.
10 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 12 December 2004 at 01:29 in ♐ Sagittarius 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