Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 54% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 7 December 2001 at 19:52 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 ∠11° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2001 after 22 days on 30 December 2001 at 10:41.
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 1.3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1948".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 23 of Meeus index or 976 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 7 minutes and it is 2 hours and 34 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 1 hour and 23 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 40 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 ∠53.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠86.2°.
1 day since point of perigee on 6 December 2001 at 22:48 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 14 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 21 December 2001 at 13:02 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 363 299 km (225 744 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 14 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 634 km (251 428 mi).
5 days after ascending node on 2 December 2001 at 05:30 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 15 December 2001 at 04:32 in ♐ Sagittarius.
4 days since the last northern standstill on 3 December 2001 at 06:54 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠24.246° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠-24.250° at the point of next southern standstill on 16 December 2001 at 07:51 in ♑ Capricorn.
5 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 14 December 2001 at 20:48 in ♐ Sagittarius 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