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 9 August 2012 at 18:55 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 leaving the last ∠4° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♊ Gemini later.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2012 after 21 days on 31 August 2012 at 13:58.
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 6.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1893".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 155 of Meeus index or 1108 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 30 minutes and it is 1 hour and 14 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 1 hour and 14 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 55 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 ∠248.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠283.7°.
Moon is at apogee at 10:51 about 12 days since last perigee on 29 July 2012 at 08:30 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 13 days until point of next perigee on 23 August 2012 at 19:39 in ♏ Scorpio.
This apogee Moon is 404 125 km (251 112 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's closest apogee of 2012. It is 1 283 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 74 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
13 days after ascending node on 28 July 2012 at 10:34 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 11 August 2012 at 00:04 in ♊ Gemini.
11 days since the last southern standstill on 29 July 2012 at 12:11 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-21.592° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠21.492° at the point of next northern standstill on 12 August 2012 at 09:47 in ♊ Gemini.
13 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 17 August 2012 at 15:54 in ♌ Leo 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
