Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 6% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 27 days old.
The moon rises after midnight to early morning and sets in the afternoon. It is visible in the early morning low to the east.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠8° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 23 May 2003 at 00:31.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2003 after 16 days on 14 June 2003 at 11:16.
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 6.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1893".
The Moon is 27 days old and navigating from the second to the final 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°.
Moon is at apogee at 13:05 about 12 days since last perigee on 15 May 2003 at 15:39 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 15 days until point of next perigee on 12 June 2003 at 23:18 in ♏ Scorpio.
This apogee Moon is 406 171 km (252 383 mi) away from Earth. It is 763 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 538 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
12 days after descending node on 16 May 2003 at 10:51 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 30 May 2003 at 08:33 in ♉ Taurus.
9 days since the last southern standstill on 19 May 2003 at 03:13 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.503° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠26.491° at the point of next northern standstill on 2 June 2003 at 15:27 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 2 days on 31 May 2003 at 04:20 in ♊ Gemini 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
