Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 98% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 16 days old.
The moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It is visible to the southwest and it is high in the sky after midnight.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠13° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 1 day on 18 March 2003 at 10:34.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2003 after 28 days on 16 April 2003 at 19:36.
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 2% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1966" and ∠1927".
The Moon is 16 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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°.
Moon is at perigee at 18:57 about 12 days since last apogee on 7 March 2003 at 16:34 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 15 days until point of next apogee on 4 April 2003 at 04:31 in ♉ Taurus.
This perigee Moon is 359 818 km (223 581 mi) away from Earth. It is 2 690 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 10 538 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
9 days after ascending node on 9 March 2003 at 19:23 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 22 March 2003 at 17:37 in ♏ Scorpio.
6 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 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-26.258° at the point of next southern standstill on 25 March 2003 at 11:01 in ♑ Capricorn.
9 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 13 days on 1 April 2003 at 19:19 in ♈ Aries 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