Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 43% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 23 December 2005 at 19:36 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 ∠10° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2006 after 20 days on 14 January 2006 at 09:48.
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 8.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1796" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 73 of Meeus index or 1026 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 11 minutes and it is 1 hour 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 33 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 36 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 ∠306.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠329.9°.
3 days since point of apogee on 21 December 2005 at 02:49 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 1 January 2006 at 22:50 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 399 060 km (247 964 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 8 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 361 750 km (224 781 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♎ Libra at 10:43 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 12 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 6 January 2006 at 05:01 in ♈ Aries.
8 days since the last northern standstill on 16 December 2005 at 07:14 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.378° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.387° at the point of next southern standstill on 30 December 2005 at 13:57 in ♐ Sagittarius.
14 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 6 days on 31 December 2005 at 03:12 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