Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 55% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 24 February 2011 at 23:26 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 first ∠0° of ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2011 after 23 days on 19 March 2011 at 18:10.
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% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1919" and ∠1939".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 137 of Meeus index or 1090 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 18 hours and 15 minutes and it is 29 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2011. 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 31 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 32 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 ∠139.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠167°.
5 days since point of perigee on 19 February 2011 at 07:27 in ♍ Virgo 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 6 March 2011 at 07:50 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 373 513 km (232 090 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 9 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 584 km (252 640 mi).
10 days after descending node on 14 February 2011 at 08:14 in ♋ Cancer the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 26 February 2011 at 20:19 in ♐ Sagittarius.
11 days since the last northern standstill on 13 February 2011 at 09:00 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠24.080° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-23.985° at the point of next southern standstill on 25 February 2011 at 22:13 in ♐ Sagittarius.
24 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 8 days on 4 March 2011 at 20:46 in ♓ Pisces 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