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 21 April 2006 at 03:28 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 ∠6° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2006 after 21 days on 13 May 2006 at 06:51.
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 2.4% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1955" and ∠1909".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 77 of Meeus index or 1030 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 29 minutes and it is 13 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2006. 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 and 15 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 54 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 ∠19° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠38.4°.
11 days since point of apogee on 9 April 2006 at 13:16 in ♌ Leo 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 25 April 2006 at 10:38 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 366 583 km (227 784 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 3 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 363 737 km (226 016 mi).
9 days after descending node on 12 April 2006 at 02:35 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 25 April 2006 at 12:59 in ♈ Aries.
2 days since the last southern standstill on 18 April 2006 at 22:27 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.668° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.616° at the point of next northern standstill on 1 May 2006 at 16:26 in ♊ Gemini.
23 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 27 April 2006 at 19:44 in ♉ Taurus 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