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 28 November 2010 at 20:36 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 ∠16° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2010 after 21 days on 21 December 2010 at 08:13.
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 1.4% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1945".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 134 of Meeus index or 1087 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 44 minutes and it is 2 hours and 43 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 equal to the mean synodic month length. It is %hours_to_shortest% and %minutes_to_shortest% longer than the 21st century's shortest and %hours_to_longest% and %minutes_to_longest% shorter than the 21st century's longest synodic months.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠39.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠67°.
14 days since point of apogee on 15 November 2010 at 11:47 in ♓ Pisces the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 30 November 2010 at 19:09 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 363 302 km (225 745 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 439 km (229 559 mi).
5 days after descending node on 24 November 2010 at 06:27 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 7 December 2010 at 04:15 in ♑ Capricorn.
6 days since the last northern standstill on 23 November 2010 at 04:24 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠24.238° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠-24.233° at the point of next southern standstill on 6 December 2010 at 02:10 in ♐ Sagittarius.
19 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 5 December 2010 at 17:36 in ♐ Sagittarius 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