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 15 July 2009 at 09:53 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 ∠24° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2009 after 21 days on 6 August 2009 at 00:55.
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 0.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1876" and ∠1888".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 117 of Meeus index or 1070 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 7 hours and 1 minute and it is 27 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2009. 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 44 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 25 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 ∠349.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠4.5°.
7 days since point of apogee on 7 July 2009 at 21:39 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 21 July 2009 at 20:16 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 382 159 km (237 463 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 6 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 465 km (222 118 mi).
6 days after ascending node on 8 July 2009 at 15:24 in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 22 July 2009 at 03:47 in ♌ Leo.
10 days since the last southern standstill on 5 July 2009 at 07:34 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.460° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠26.477° at the point of next northern standstill on 19 July 2009 at 13:01 in ♊ Gemini.
6 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 22 July 2009 at 02:35 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