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 26 March 2011 at 12:07 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 ∠5° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2011 after 22 days on 18 April 2011 at 02:44.
There is medium ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at very acute angle, so their combined tidal force is moderate.
Lunar disc appears visually 3.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1862" and ∠1923".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 138 of Meeus index or 1091 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 17 hours and 46 minutes and it is 1 hour and 28 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decrease with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at perigee (∠0° or ∠360°).
The length of the current synodic month is 5 hours and 2 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 1 minute 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 ∠167° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠190.9°.
6 days since point of perigee on 19 March 2011 at 19:09 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 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 2 April 2011 at 09:00 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 384 915 km (239 175 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 6 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 656 km (252 684 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 25 March 2011 at 21:09 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 14 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 9 April 2011 at 12:48 in ♊ Gemini.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 25 March 2011 at 05:02 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-23.716° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 13 days to face maximum declination of ∠23.569° at the point of next northern standstill on 8 April 2011 at 22:55 in ♊ Gemini.
1 day since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 8 days on 3 April 2011 at 14:32 in ♈ Aries 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