Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 51% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 15 April 2001 at 15:31 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 ∠24° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2001 after 22 days on 7 May 2001 at 13:53.
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 7.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1775" and ∠1912".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 15 of Meeus index or 968 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 5 minutes and it is 2 hours and 45 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 21 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 42 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 ∠232.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠267.3°.
10 days since point of perigee on 5 April 2001 at 10:04 in ♍ Virgo 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 17 April 2001 at 06:06 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 403 787 km (250 902 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next day until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 501 km (251 345 mi).
1 day after descending node on 14 April 2001 at 06:52 in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 28 April 2001 at 09:43 in ♋ Cancer.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 14 April 2001 at 11:36 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-23.123° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 13 days to face maximum declination of ∠23.248° at the point of next northern standstill on 28 April 2001 at 16:18 in ♋ Cancer.
14 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♋ Cancer the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 8 days on 23 April 2001 at 15:26 in ♈ Aries 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