Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 50% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 26 June 2008 at 12:10 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 ∠5° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Buck Moon of July 2008 after 21 days on 18 July 2008 at 07:59.
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 1.5% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1917" and ∠1887".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 104 of Meeus index or 1057 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 6 hours and 56 minutes and it is 58 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2008. 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 5 hours and 48 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 21 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 ∠4.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠20.1°.
9 days since point of apogee on 16 June 2008 at 17:33 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 1 July 2008 at 21:22 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 373 993 km (232 388 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 5 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 359 513 km (223 391 mi).
3 days after ascending node on 22 June 2008 at 23:17 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 9 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 5 July 2008 at 15:53 in ♌ Leo.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 18 June 2008 at 09:08 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.510° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.541° at the point of next northern standstill on 1 July 2008 at 21:36 in ♊ Gemini.
3 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 3 July 2008 at 02:19 in ♋ Cancer 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