Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 48% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 21 July 2003 at 07:01 UTC.
The moon rises at midnight and sets at noon. It is visible to the south in the morning.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing first ∠1° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2003 after 21 days on 12 August 2003 at 04:48.
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 6.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1772" and ∠1888".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 43 of Meeus index or 996 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 14 minutes and it is 1 hour and 40 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 30 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 39 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠234.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠268.5°.
10 days since point of perigee on 10 July 2003 at 22:05 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 22 July 2003 at 19:37 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 404 466 km (251 324 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next day until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 330 km (251 239 mi).
11 days after descending node on 10 July 2003 at 04:17 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 23 July 2003 at 18:44 in ♉ Taurus.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 12 July 2003 at 22:53 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.465° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠26.493° at the point of next northern standstill on 27 July 2003 at 03:55 in ♋ Cancer.
24 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 7 days on 29 July 2003 at 06:53 in ♌ Leo 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