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 2 April 2005 at 00:50 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 ∠5° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2005 after 22 days on 24 April 2005 at 10:06.
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 2.3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1965" and ∠1920".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 64 of Meeus index or 1017 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 22 minutes and it is 51 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 22 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 47 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 ∠36.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠62.3°.
12 days since point of apogee on 19 March 2005 at 22:54 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 4 April 2005 at 11:10 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 364 732 km (226 634 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 2 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 368 492 km (228 970 mi).
5 days after descending node on 27 March 2005 at 05:15 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 9 April 2005 at 02:59 in ♈ Aries.
At 10:19 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-28.372°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠28.381° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 14 April 2005 at 16:38.
19 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♈ Aries the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 8 April 2005 at 20:32 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