Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 52% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 23 February 2003 at 16:46 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 first ∠2° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2003 after 22 days on 18 March 2003 at 10:34.
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 1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1959" and ∠1939".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 38 of Meeus index or 991 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 47 minutes and it is 57 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 3 hours and 3 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours 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 ∠90.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠127.8°.
3 days since point of perigee on 19 February 2003 at 16:19 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 7 March 2003 at 16:34 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 365 828 km (227 315 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 12 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 383 km (251 893 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♏ Scorpio at 15:47 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 9 March 2003 at 19:23 in ♉ Taurus.
10 days since the last northern standstill on 13 February 2003 at 10:59 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠25.923° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠-26.015° at the point of next southern standstill on 26 February 2003 at 05:53 in ♑ Capricorn.
12 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 3 March 2003 at 02:35 in ♓ Pisces 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