Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 51% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 18 June 2006 at 14:08 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 ∠4° of ♓ Pisces tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♈ Aries later.
Next Full Moon is the Buck Moon of July 2006 after 22 days on 11 July 2006 at 03:02.
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 4.3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1972" and ∠1888".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 79 of Meeus index or 1032 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 40 minutes and it is 1 hour and 46 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 2 hours and 4 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 5 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 ∠64.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠97.5°.
1 day since point of perigee on 16 June 2006 at 17:07 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 13 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 1 July 2006 at 20:12 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 363 552 km (225 901 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 13 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 448 km (251 312 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♓ Pisces at 19:11 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next descending node later on 2 July 2006 at 14:19 in ♍ Virgo.
6 days since the last southern standstill on 12 June 2006 at 10:30 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.452° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.444° at the point of next northern standstill on 25 June 2006 at 08:40 in ♊ Gemini.
At 19:11 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 7 days on 25 June 2006 at 16:05 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