Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 57% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 12 September 2009 at 02:16 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 ∠11° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2009 after 22 days on 4 October 2009 at 06:10.
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 1.8% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1941" and ∠1906".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 119 of Meeus index or 1072 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 43 minutes and it is 2 hours and 6 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. 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 4 hours and 1 minute shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 8 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 ∠20.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠39.3°.
11 days since point of apogee on 31 August 2009 at 11:04 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 16 September 2009 at 07:55 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 369 251 km (229 442 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 4 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 364 054 km (226 213 mi).
10 days after ascending node on 1 September 2009 at 03:18 in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 14 September 2009 at 20:56 in ♋ Cancer.
13 days since the last southern standstill on 28 August 2009 at 20:17 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.391° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠26.289° at the point of next northern standstill on 12 September 2009 at 04:36 in ♊ Gemini.
10 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 7 days on 18 September 2009 at 18:44 in ♍ Virgo 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