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 19 December 2008 at 10:29 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 ∠1° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♎ Libra later.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2009 after 22 days on 11 January 2009 at 03:27.
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 4.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1869" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 110 of Meeus index or 1063 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 28 minutes and it is 5 minutes shorter 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 6 hours and 44 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 19 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 ∠161.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠186.6°.
6 days since point of perigee on 12 December 2008 at 21:37 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 26 December 2008 at 17:50 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 383 414 km (238 242 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 7 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 602 km (252 651 mi).
3 days after descending node on 15 December 2008 at 23:02 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 30 December 2008 at 07:40 in ♒ Aquarius.
6 days since the last northern standstill on 12 December 2008 at 18:39 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.024° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠-27.026° at the point of next southern standstill on 26 December 2008 at 08:03 in ♐ Sagittarius.
16 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 27 December 2008 at 12:23 in ♑ Capricorn 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