Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 95% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 12 days young.
The moon rises in the afternoon and sets after midnight to early morning. It is visible to the southeast in early evening and it is up for most of the night.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is leaving the last ∠1° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♍ Virgo later.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 5 days on 11 March 2003 at 07:15.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2003 after 1 day on 18 March 2003 at 10:34.
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 0.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1914" and ∠1929".
The Moon is 12 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 39 of Meeus index or 992 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 44 minutes and it is 12 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 hours longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 3 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 ∠127.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠157.7°.
8 days since point of apogee on 7 March 2003 at 16:34 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 19 March 2003 at 18:57 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 374 407 km (232 646 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 3 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 359 818 km (223 581 mi).
6 days after ascending node on 9 March 2003 at 19:23 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 22 March 2003 at 17:37 in ♏ Scorpio.
3 days since the last northern standstill on 12 March 2003 at 19:44 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠26.158° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠-26.258° at the point of next southern standstill on 25 March 2003 at 11:01 in ♑ Capricorn.
6 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 18 March 2003 at 10:34 in ♍ Virgo 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