Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 55% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 4 March 2013 at 21:53 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 about ∠9° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2013 after 22 days on 27 March 2013 at 09:27.
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 1.9% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1971" and ∠1935".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 162 of Meeus index or 1115 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 31 minutes and it is 1 hour and 13 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 13 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 56 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 ∠44.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠73.6°.
13 days since point of apogee on 19 February 2013 at 06:30 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 5 March 2013 at 23:20 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 363 642 km (225 957 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 954 km (229 879 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 3 March 2013 at 02:30 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 16 March 2013 at 06:15 in ♉ Taurus.
12 days since the last northern standstill on 19 February 2013 at 13:35 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.583° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-20.453° at the point of next southern standstill on 5 March 2013 at 06:41 in ♐ Sagittarius.
1 day since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 11 March 2013 at 19:51 in ♓ Pisces 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