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 ∠23° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 27 December 2002 at 00:31.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2003 after 16 days on 18 January 2003 at 10:48.
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 1.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1925" 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 36 of Meeus index or 989 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 48 minutes and it is 1 hour and 38 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. 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 4 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 59 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠32.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠56.5°.
2 days since point of perigee on 30 December 2002 at 01:06 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 11 January 2003 at 00:43 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 372 397 km (231 397 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 9 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 343 km (251 247 mi).
1 day after descending node on 31 December 2002 at 11:16 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 13 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 14 January 2003 at 13:38 in ♊ Gemini.
11 days since the last northern standstill on 20 December 2002 at 18:29 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠25.790° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-25.783° at the point of next southern standstill on 2 January 2003 at 16:56 in ♑ Capricorn.
14 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 2 January 2003 at 20:23 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
