Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 50% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 7 January 2010 at 10:40 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 ∠18° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2010 after 22 days on 30 January 2010 at 06:18.
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 2.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1911" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 123 of Meeus index or 1076 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 9 minutes and it is 31 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2010. 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 6 hours and 25 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 38 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 ∠135.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠164.3°.
5 days since point of perigee on 1 January 2010 at 20:36 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 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 17 January 2010 at 01:40 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 375 012 km (233 022 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 9 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 434 km (252 546 mi).
5 days after descending node on 1 January 2010 at 12:30 in ♋ Cancer the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 14 January 2010 at 23:18 in ♑ Capricorn.
8 days since the last northern standstill on 30 December 2009 at 10:09 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠25.787° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠-25.796° at the point of next southern standstill on 12 January 2010 at 08:33 in ♐ Sagittarius.
19 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 15 January 2010 at 07:11 in ♑ Capricorn 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