Waxing Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 8% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 3 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 ∠16° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the New Moon before 2 days on 1 May 2003 at 12:15.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2003 after 11 days on 16 May 2003 at 03:36.
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 6.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1787" and ∠1903".
The Moon is 3 days young and navigating from the beginning to the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 41 of Meeus index or 994 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 5 minutes and it is 1 hour and 46 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. 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 3 hours and 21 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 42 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 ∠181.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠205.5°.
3 days since point of apogee on 1 May 2003 at 07:39 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 15 May 2003 at 15:39 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 401 061 km (249 208 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 11 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 449 km (222 109 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 3 May 2003 at 02:17 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 16 May 2003 at 10:51 in ♏ Scorpio.
12 days since the last southern standstill on 21 April 2003 at 17:59 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.442° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠26.496° at the point of next northern standstill on 6 May 2003 at 09:48 in ♋ Cancer.
1 day 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 11 days on 16 May 2003 at 03:36 in ♏ Scorpio 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