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 12 December 2006 at 14:32 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 ∠19° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2007 after 22 days on 3 January 2007 at 13:57.
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 9.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1772" and ∠1949".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 85 of Meeus index or 1038 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 43 minutes and it is 1 hour and 43 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 2 hours and 59 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 4 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠238.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠276.5°.
10 days since point of perigee on 2 December 2006 at 00:06 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 13 December 2006 at 18:55 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 404 517 km (251 355 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next day until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 418 km (251 294 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♍ Virgo at 15:19 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 26 December 2006 at 10:36 in ♓ Pisces.
6 days since the last northern standstill on 6 December 2006 at 03:33 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.402° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.378° at the point of next southern standstill on 20 December 2006 at 13:40 in ♐ Sagittarius.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♓ Pisces the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 8 days on 20 December 2006 at 14:01 in ♐ Sagittarius 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