Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 44% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 21 August 2011 at 21:55 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 ∠6° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2011 after 20 days on 12 September 2011 at 09:27.
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 5.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1803" and ∠1897".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 143 of Meeus index or 1096 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 24 minutes and it is 19 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 4 hours and 20 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 49 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 ∠312.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠333.4°.
3 days since point of apogee on 18 August 2011 at 16:23 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 30 August 2011 at 17:35 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 397 583 km (247 047 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 8 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 360 858 km (224 227 mi).
13 days after ascending node on 9 August 2011 at 06:35 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 23 August 2011 at 17:23 in ♊ Gemini.
13 days since the last southern standstill on 8 August 2011 at 23:15 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-23.270° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠23.149° at the point of next northern standstill on 23 August 2011 at 12:17 in ♊ Gemini.
13 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 6 days on 29 August 2011 at 03:04 in ♍ Virgo 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