Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 6% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 2 days young.
The moon rises in the morning and sets in the evening. It is visible toward the southwest in early evening.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠14° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 2 days on 1 April 2003 at 19:19.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2003 after 12 days on 16 April 2003 at 19:36.
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 8.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1918".
The Moon is 2 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 40 of Meeus index or 993 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 56 minutes and it is 51 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2003. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decrease with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at perigee (∠0° or ∠360°).
The length of the current synodic month is 4 hours and 12 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 51 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 ∠157.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠181.7°.
Moon is at apogee at 04:31 about 15 days since last perigee on 19 March 2003 at 18:57 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next perigee on 17 April 2003 at 04:58 in ♏ Scorpio.
This apogee Moon is 406 211 km (252 408 mi) away from Earth. It is 803 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 498 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
12 days after descending node on 22 March 2003 at 17:37 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 5 April 2003 at 21:41 in ♉ Taurus.
10 days since the last southern standstill on 25 March 2003 at 11:01 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.258° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠26.383° at the point of next northern standstill on 9 April 2003 at 03:25 in ♋ Cancer.
25 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 12 days on 16 April 2003 at 19:36 in ♎ Libra 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