Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 45% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 25 March 2003 at 01:51 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 about ∠10° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2003 after 22 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 0.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1914" and ∠1924".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through 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°.
5 days since point of perigee on 19 March 2003 at 18:57 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 4 April 2003 at 04:31 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 374 410 km (232 648 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 9 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 211 km (252 408 mi).
2 days after descending node on 22 March 2003 at 17:37 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 5 April 2003 at 21:41 in ♉ Taurus.
At 11:01 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-26.258°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠26.383° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 9 April 2003 at 03:25.
15 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 7 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