Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 56% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 29 February 2008 at 02:18 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 ∠3° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2008 after 22 days on 21 March 2008 at 18:40.
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 9.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1937".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 100 of Meeus index or 1053 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 30 minutes and it is 2 hours and 49 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 46 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 17 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 ∠280° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠310.8°.
Moon is at apogee at 01:27 about 14 days since last perigee on 14 February 2008 at 01:07 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next perigee on 10 March 2008 at 21:39 in ♈ Aries.
This apogee Moon is 404 442 km (251 309 mi) away from Earth. It is 966 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 267 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
7 days after descending node on 20 February 2008 at 20:01 in ♌ Leo 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 6 March 2008 at 06:52 in ♒ Aquarius.
12 days since the last northern standstill on 16 February 2008 at 06:10 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.043° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-28.030° at the point of next southern standstill on 1 March 2008 at 08:03 in ♐ Sagittarius.
20 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 8 days on 7 March 2008 at 17:14 in ♓ Pisces 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