Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 13% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 26 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 leaving the last ∠4° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♒ Aquarius later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 3 days on 23 February 2003 at 16:46.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2003 after 18 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 3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1880" and ∠1937".
The Moon is 26 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
7 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 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 7 March 2003 at 16:34 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 381 229 km (236 885 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 8 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 383 km (251 893 mi).
3 days after descending node on 23 February 2003 at 15:47 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 9 March 2003 at 19:23 in ♉ Taurus.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 26 February 2003 at 05:53 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.015° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 13 days to face maximum declination of ∠26.158° at the point of next northern standstill on 12 March 2003 at 19:44 in ♋ Cancer.
16 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 3 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