Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 57% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 23 July 2011 at 05:02 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 ∠22° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2011 after 22 days on 13 August 2011 at 18:58.
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 6.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1769" and ∠1889".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 142 of Meeus index or 1095 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 46 minutes and it is 1 hour and 22 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 2 hours and 58 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 11 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠283.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠312.1°.
1 day since point of apogee on 21 July 2011 at 22:46 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 2 August 2011 at 20:59 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 405 279 km (251 829 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 11 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 365 756 km (227 270 mi).
9 days after ascending node on 13 July 2011 at 02:27 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 5 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 27 July 2011 at 12:03 in ♊ Gemini.
9 days since the last southern standstill on 12 July 2011 at 16:51 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-23.383° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠23.333° at the point of next northern standstill on 27 July 2011 at 03:02 in ♊ Gemini.
9 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 30 July 2011 at 18:40 in ♌ Leo 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