Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 55% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 20 August 2003 at 00:48 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 about ∠20° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2003 after 22 days on 10 September 2003 at 16:36.
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 7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1896".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last 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°.
Moon is at apogee at 14:22 about 13 days since last perigee on 6 August 2003 at 14:06 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next perigee on 31 August 2003 at 18:47 in ♎ Libra.
This apogee Moon is 404 102 km (251 097 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's closest apogee of 2003. It is 1 306 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 51 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
Moon is in ascending node in ♉ Taurus at 21:08 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next descending node later on 2 September 2003 at 07:23 in ♏ Scorpio.
10 days since the last southern standstill on 9 August 2003 at 06:19 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.553° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠26.649° at the point of next northern standstill on 23 August 2003 at 11:41 in ♋ Cancer.
At 21:08 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 8 days on 27 August 2003 at 17:26 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