Full Moon on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 100%. The lunar cycle is 15 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Full Moon phase is on 16 May 2003 at 03:36 UTC.
The moon rises at sunset and sets at sunrise. It is visible all night and it is high in the sky around midnight.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing first ∠0° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
The Full Moon these days is the Flower of May 2003.
There is high Full Moon ocean tide on this date. Combined Sun and Moon gravitational tidal force working on Earth is strong, because of the Sun-Earth-Moon syzygy alignment.
Lunar disc appears visually 3.6% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1967" and ∠1898".
The Moon is 15 days old and navigating through the middle 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°.
1 day since point of perigee on 15 May 2003 at 15:39 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 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 28 May 2003 at 13:05 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 364 348 km (226 395 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 12 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 171 km (252 383 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♏ Scorpio at 10:51 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 30 May 2003 at 08:33 in ♉ Taurus.
10 days since the last northern standstill on 6 May 2003 at 09:48 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠26.496° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠-26.503° at the point of next southern standstill on 19 May 2003 at 03:13 in ♑ Capricorn.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
The Moon is in a Full Moon geocentric opposition with the Sun and thus forming 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