Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 81% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 19 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 ∠21° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 3 days on 16 April 2003 at 19:36.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2003 after 25 days on 16 May 2003 at 03:36.
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 1.9% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1946" and ∠1910".
The Moon is 19 days old and navigating from the middle to the last 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°.
3 days since point of perigee on 17 April 2003 at 04:58 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 1 May 2003 at 07:39 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 368 380 km (228 901 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 10 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 530 km (252 606 mi).
1 day after descending node on 19 April 2003 at 00:24 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 3 May 2003 at 02:17 in ♉ Taurus.
11 days since the last northern standstill on 9 April 2003 at 03:25 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠26.383° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-26.442° at the point of next southern standstill on 21 April 2003 at 17:59 in ♑ Capricorn.
14 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 11 days on 1 May 2003 at 12:15 in ♉ Taurus 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