Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 49% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 15 May 2001 at 10:11 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 ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♓ Pisces later.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2001 after 21 days on 6 June 2001 at 01:39.
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 7.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1898".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 16 of Meeus index or 969 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 20 minutes and it is 2 hours and 8 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 24 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 45 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 ∠267.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠299.7°.
Moon is at apogee at 01:29 about 12 days since last perigee on 2 May 2001 at 03:37 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next perigee on 27 May 2001 at 07:07 in ♌ Leo.
This apogee Moon is 404 141 km (251 122 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's closest apogee of 2001. It is 1 267 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 90 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
4 days after descending node on 11 May 2001 at 11:02 in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 25 May 2001 at 13:51 in ♊ Gemini.
3 days since the last southern standstill on 11 May 2001 at 20:26 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-23.329° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠23.388° at the point of next northern standstill on 25 May 2001 at 23:03 in ♋ Cancer.
17 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 7 days on 23 May 2001 at 02:46 in ♊ Gemini 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