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 18 January 2009 at 02:46 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 ∠20° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2009 after 23 days on 9 February 2009 at 14:49.
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 6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1837" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 111 of Meeus index or 1064 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 33 minutes and it is 1 hour and 53 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2009. 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 49 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 14 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 ∠186.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠213.2°.
7 days since point of perigee on 10 January 2009 at 10:52 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 23 January 2009 at 00:11 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 390 096 km (242 394 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 5 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 116 km (252 349 mi).
5 days after descending node on 12 January 2009 at 08:34 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 9 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 26 January 2009 at 13:27 in ♒ Aquarius.
8 days since the last northern standstill on 9 January 2009 at 05:38 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.060° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-27.081° at the point of next southern standstill on 22 January 2009 at 14:02 in ♐ Sagittarius.
18 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 26 January 2009 at 07:55 in ♒ Aquarius 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