First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 59% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 10 January 2003 at 13:15 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 first ∠1° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2003 after 6 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 9.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 37 of Meeus index or 990 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 26 minutes and it is 1 hour and 21 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 1 hour and 41 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 21 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 ∠56.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠90.6°.
Moon is at apogee at 00:43 about 11 days since last perigee on 30 December 2002 at 01:06 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next perigee on 23 January 2003 at 22:43 in ♎ Libra.
This apogee Moon is 404 343 km (251 247 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 065 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 366 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
11 days after descending node on 31 December 2002 at 11:16 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 14 January 2003 at 13:38 in ♊ Gemini.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 2 January 2003 at 16:56 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-25.783° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠25.794° at the point of next northern standstill on 17 January 2003 at 02:11 in ♋ Cancer.
24 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 6 days on 18 January 2003 at 10:48 in ♋ Cancer 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