Waning Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 91% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 17 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 passing about ∠25° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Full Moon before 3 days on 10 October 2003 at 07:27.
Next Full Moon is the Beaver Moon of November 2003 after 26 days on 9 November 2003 at 01:14.
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 8.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1923".
The Moon is 17 days old and navigating from the middle to the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 46 of Meeus index or 999 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 41 minutes and it is 28 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2003. 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 3 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 6 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 ∠325.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠344°.
15 days since point of perigee on 28 September 2003 at 05:59 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 day until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 14 October 2003 at 02:27 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 405 480 km (251 954 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next day until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 692 km (252 085 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♉ Taurus at 03:40 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 26 October 2003 at 18:43 in ♏ Scorpio.
10 days since the last southern standstill on 2 October 2003 at 17:06 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.963° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.054° at the point of next northern standstill on 17 October 2003 at 03:41 in ♋ Cancer.
At 03:40 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 12 days on 25 October 2003 at 12:50 in ♏ Scorpio 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