Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 46% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 31 August 2002 at 02:31 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 ∠12° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2002 after 21 days on 21 September 2002 at 13:59.
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 4.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1820" and ∠1901".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 32 of Meeus index or 985 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 7 hours and 55 minutes and it is 12 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2002. 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 4 hours and 49 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 20 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 ∠324.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠343.1°.
4 days since point of apogee on 26 August 2002 at 17:43 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 8 September 2002 at 03:14 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 393 728 km (244 651 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 7 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 358 745 km (222 914 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♊ Gemini at 14:43 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 12 days until Moon's next descending node later on 13 September 2002 at 03:39 in ♐ Sagittarius.
12 days since the last southern standstill on 19 August 2002 at 00:37 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-25.159° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠25.282° at the point of next northern standstill on 2 September 2002 at 16:03 in ♋ Cancer.
At 14:43 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 6 days on 7 September 2002 at 03:10 in ♍ Virgo 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