Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 43% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 18 September 2003 at 19:03 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 ∠4° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2003 after 20 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 6.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1791" and ∠1910".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through 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°.
3 days since point of apogee on 16 September 2003 at 09:22 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 28 September 2003 at 05:59 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 400 097 km (248 609 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 8 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 362 837 km (225 456 mi).
3 days after ascending node on 15 September 2003 at 23:28 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 9 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 29 September 2003 at 10:34 in ♏ Scorpio.
At 19:56 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠26.874°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-26.963° at the point of next southern standstill in ♑ Capricorn on 2 October 2003 at 17:06.
3 days 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 6 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