Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 50% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 23 June 2011 at 11:48 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 first ∠2° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Buck Moon of July 2011 after 21 days on 15 July 2011 at 06:40.
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 6.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1769" and ∠1888".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 141 of Meeus index or 1094 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 51 minutes and it is 2 hours and 5 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 53 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 16 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 ∠248.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠283.1°.
11 days since point of perigee on 12 June 2011 at 01:42 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 24 June 2011 at 04:13 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 405 243 km (251 806 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next day until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 275 km (251 205 mi).
7 days after ascending node on 15 June 2011 at 18:35 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 30 June 2011 at 04:14 in ♊ Gemini.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 15 June 2011 at 08:52 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-23.399° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠23.399° at the point of next northern standstill on 29 June 2011 at 17:46 in ♊ Gemini.
7 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 1 July 2011 at 08:54 in ♋ Cancer 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