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 11 October 2009 at 08:56 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 ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Beaver Moon of November 2009 after 22 days on 2 November 2009 at 19:14.
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 2.5% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1971" and ∠1922".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 120 of Meeus index or 1073 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 49 minutes and it is 2 hours and 52 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 1 hour and 55 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 14 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 ∠39.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠65.2°.
13 days since point of apogee on 28 September 2009 at 03:33 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 13 October 2009 at 12:28 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 363 633 km (225 951 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 2 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 068 km (229 328 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♋ Cancer at 23:01 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 25 October 2009 at 08:52 in ♑ Capricorn.
2 days since the last northern standstill on 9 October 2009 at 09:49 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠26.057° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-25.951° at the point of next southern standstill on 22 October 2009 at 12:10 in ♐ Sagittarius.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 18 October 2009 at 05:33 in ♎ Libra 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