Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 57% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 15 February 2001 at 03:24 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 ∠18° of ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2001 after 23 days on 9 March 2001 at 17:23.
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 4.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1855" and ∠1943".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 13 of Meeus index or 966 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 14 minutes and it is 2 hours and 14 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2001. 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 7 hours and 1 minute longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 33 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠177.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠202.8°.
6 days since point of perigee on 7 February 2001 at 22:19 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 20 February 2001 at 21:38 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 386 414 km (240 107 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 6 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 332 km (252 483 mi).
8 days after ascending node on 6 February 2001 at 00:48 in ♋ Cancer the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 19 February 2001 at 02:52 in ♑ Capricorn.
8 days since the last northern standstill on 5 February 2001 at 19:54 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠22.604° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠-22.648° at the point of next southern standstill on 18 February 2001 at 21:27 in ♑ Capricorn.
8 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♋ Cancer the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 8 days on 23 February 2001 at 08:21 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