Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 71% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 20 days old.
The moon rises in the evening and sets in the morning. It is visible to the southwest and it is high in the sky after midnight.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is leaving the last ∠2° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♊ Gemini later.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 5 days on 10 September 2003 at 16:36.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2003 after 23 days on 10 October 2003 at 07:27.
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 7.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1909".
The Moon is 20 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 45 of Meeus index or 998 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 43 minutes and it is 2 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 1 minute shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 8 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 ∠301° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠325.5°.
Moon is at apogee at 09:22 about 15 days since last perigee on 31 August 2003 at 18:47 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next perigee on 28 September 2003 at 05:59 in ♏ Scorpio.
This apogee Moon is 404 713 km (251 477 mi) away from Earth. It is 695 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 1 996 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
1 day after ascending node on 15 September 2003 at 23:28 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 29 September 2003 at 10:34 in ♏ Scorpio.
11 days since the last southern standstill on 5 September 2003 at 11:54 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.746° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠26.874° at the point of next northern standstill on 19 September 2003 at 19:56 in ♋ Cancer.
1 day since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 9 days on 26 September 2003 at 03:09 in ♎ Libra 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