Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 53% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 22 March 2006 at 19:10 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 ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♑ Capricorn later.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2006 after 22 days on 13 April 2006 at 16:40.
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 0.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1908" and ∠1925".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 76 of Meeus index or 1029 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 44 minutes and it is 15 minutes longer 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 3 hours shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 9 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 ∠2.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠19°.
9 days since point of apogee on 13 March 2006 at 01:44 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 28 March 2006 at 07:13 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 375 752 km (233 481 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 5 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 359 170 km (223 178 mi).
6 days after descending node on 15 March 2006 at 19:52 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 29 March 2006 at 03:31 in ♈ Aries.
At 16:53 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-28.725°. This is the year's southernmost lunar standstill of 2006. Over the upcoming 12 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠28.715° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 4 April 2006 at 07:35.
20 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♓ Pisces the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 29 March 2006 at 10:15 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