Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 52% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 18 March 2009 at 17:47 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 ∠25° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2009 after 22 days on 9 April 2009 at 14:56.
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 8.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1770" and ∠1927".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 113 of Meeus index or 1066 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 31 minutes and it is 3 hours and 14 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 1 hour and 47 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 16 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 ∠246.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠282.4°.
10 days since point of perigee on 7 March 2009 at 15:06 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 day until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 19 March 2009 at 13:16 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 404 883 km (251 583 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next day until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 302 km (251 222 mi).
10 days after descending node on 8 March 2009 at 04:05 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 22 March 2009 at 02:12 in ♒ Aquarius.
At 05:07 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-26.896°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠26.780° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 1 April 2009 at 02:50.
23 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 March 2009 at 16:06 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