Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 43% 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 ∠7° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2009 after 21 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 8.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" 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°.
Moon is at apogee at 13:16 about 11 days since last perigee on 7 March 2009 at 15:06 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 13 days until point of next perigee on 2 April 2009 at 02:31 in ♋ Cancer.
This apogee Moon is 404 302 km (251 222 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 106 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 407 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
11 days after descending node on 8 March 2009 at 04:05 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 22 March 2009 at 02:12 in ♒ Aquarius.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 18 March 2009 at 05:07 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.896° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠26.780° at the point of next northern standstill on 1 April 2009 at 02:50 in ♊ Gemini.
24 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 7 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