Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 2% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 28 days old.
The moon rises after midnight to early morning and sets in the afternoon. It is visible in the early morning low to the east.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠5° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 3 January 2005 at 17:46.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2005 after 15 days on 25 January 2005 at 10:32.
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 1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1971" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 28 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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 2005. 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°.
12 days since point of apogee on 27 December 2004 at 19:15 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 10 January 2005 at 10:07 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 363 736 km (226 015 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 356 572 km (221 564 mi).
4 days after descending node on 4 January 2005 at 21:52 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 17 January 2005 at 07:32 in ♈ Aries.
At 11:17 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-27.938°. This is the year's southernmost lunar standstill of 2005. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠27.973° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 22 January 2005 at 19:22.
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 1 day on 10 January 2005 at 12:03 in ♑ Capricorn 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