Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 77% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 10 days young.
The moon rises in the afternoon and sets after midnight to early morning. It is visible to the southeast in early evening and it is up for most of the night.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing first ∠3° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 2 days on 18 December 2004 at 16:40.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2004 after 5 days on 26 December 2004 at 15:06.
There is medium ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at very acute angle, so their combined tidal force is moderate.
Lunar disc appears visually 5.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1838" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 10 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 61 of Meeus index or 1014 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 34 minutes and it is 9 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2004. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
The length of the current synodic month is 2 hours and 10 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 59 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 ∠345.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠1.4°.
8 days since point of perigee on 12 December 2004 at 21:30 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 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 27 December 2004 at 19:15 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 389 927 km (242 289 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 6 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 488 km (252 580 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♉ Taurus at 06:51 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next descending node later on 4 January 2005 at 21:52 in ♎ Libra.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 13 December 2004 at 00:27 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.935° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.905° at the point of next northern standstill on 26 December 2004 at 14:10 in ♊ Gemini.
At 06:51 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 5 days on 26 December 2004 at 15:06 in ♊ Gemini 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