Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 56% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 27 December 2002 at 00:31 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 leaving the last ∠2° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♎ Libra later.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2003 after 22 days on 18 January 2003 at 10:48.
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 0.5% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1962" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 36 of Meeus index or 989 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 48 minutes and it is 1 hour and 38 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 4 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 59 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 ∠32.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠56.5°.
12 days since point of apogee on 14 December 2002 at 03:57 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 30 December 2002 at 01:06 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 365 383 km (227 038 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 3 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 367 904 km (228 605 mi).
8 days after ascending node on 18 December 2002 at 06:47 in ♊ Gemini 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 31 December 2002 at 11:16 in ♐ Sagittarius.
5 days since the last northern standstill on 20 December 2002 at 18:29 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠25.790° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠-25.783° at the point of next southern standstill on 2 January 2003 at 16:56 in ♑ Capricorn.
8 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 2 January 2003 at 20:23 in ♑ Capricorn 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
