Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 91% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 12 days young.
The moon rises in the afternoon and sets after midnight to early morning. It is visible to the southeast in early evening and it is up for most of the night.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠12° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 4 days on 5 August 2003 at 07:28.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2003 after 2 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 2.1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1933" and ∠1893".
The Moon is 12 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 44 of Meeus index or 997 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 34 minutes and it is 51 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 2 hours and 10 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 59 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 ∠268.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠301°.
2 days since point of perigee on 6 August 2003 at 14:06 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 19 August 2003 at 14:22 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 370 825 km (230 420 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 10 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 102 km (251 097 mi).
3 days after descending node on 6 August 2003 at 06:49 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 19 August 2003 at 21:08 in ♉ Taurus.
At 06:19 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-26.553°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠26.649° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 23 August 2003 at 11:41.
16 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 12 August 2003 at 04:48 in ♒ Aquarius 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