Waxing Gibbous on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 78% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 10 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 ∠15° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the First Quarter before 3 days on 30 December 2003 at 10:03.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2004 after 5 days on 7 January 2004 at 15:40.
There is medium ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at very acute angle, so their combined tidal force is moderate.
Lunar disc appears visually 9.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1774" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 10 days young and navigating from the first to the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 49 of Meeus index or 1002 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 22 minutes and it is 51 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
The length of the current synodic month is 1 hour and 22 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 47 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 ∠15.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠33.9°.
11 days since point of perigee on 22 December 2003 at 11:53 in ♐ Sagittarius 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 3 January 2004 at 20:19 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 404 046 km (251 063 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next day until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 707 km (252 095 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♉ Taurus at 20:11 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next descending node later on 16 January 2004 at 21:08 in ♏ Scorpio.
9 days since the last southern standstill on 23 December 2003 at 20:12 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.044° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.031° at the point of next northern standstill on 6 January 2004 at 21:36 in ♋ Cancer.
At 20:11 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 5 days on 7 January 2004 at 15:40 in ♋ Cancer 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