Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 49% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 20 May 2006 at 09:21 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 first ∠1° of ♓ Pisces tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2006 after 22 days on 11 June 2006 at 18:03.
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 3.9% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1971" and ∠1896".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 78 of Meeus index or 1031 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 42 minutes and it is 58 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 3 hours and 2 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 7 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 ∠38.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠64.2°.
13 days since point of apogee on 7 May 2006 at 06:47 in ♍ Virgo 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 22 May 2006 at 15:29 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 363 749 km (226 023 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 2 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 368 615 km (229 047 mi).
11 days after descending node on 9 May 2006 at 08:29 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 22 May 2006 at 18:00 in ♓ Pisces.
4 days since the last southern standstill on 16 May 2006 at 03:52 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.539° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.490° at the point of next northern standstill on 29 May 2006 at 01:13 in ♋ Cancer.
24 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 May 2006 at 05:26 in ♊ Gemini 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