Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 53% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 24 May 2011 at 18:52 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 ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2011 after 22 days on 15 June 2011 at 20:13.
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 5.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1789" and ∠1895".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 140 of Meeus index or 1093 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 12 minutes and it is 2 hours and 21 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 1 hour and 28 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 35 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 ∠216.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠248.4°.
9 days since point of perigee on 15 May 2011 at 11:18 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 27 May 2011 at 09:58 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 400 756 km (249 018 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 2 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 006 km (251 659 mi).
5 days after ascending node on 19 May 2011 at 09:03 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 9 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 2 June 2011 at 20:21 in ♊ Gemini.
5 days since the last southern standstill on 18 May 2011 at 23:26 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-23.403° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠23.393° at the point of next northern standstill on 2 June 2011 at 09:54 in ♊ Gemini.
5 days 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 1 June 2011 at 21:03 in ♊ Gemini 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