Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 51% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 20 September 2011 at 13:39 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 leaving the last ∠4° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♋ Cancer later.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2011 after 21 days on 12 October 2011 at 02:06.
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 4.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1829" and ∠1911".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 144 of Meeus index or 1097 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 5 minutes and it is 42 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2011. 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 39 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 30 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 ∠333.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠350.1°.
5 days since point of apogee on 15 September 2011 at 06:23 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 28 September 2011 at 01:01 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 391 800 km (243 453 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 7 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 556 km (222 175 mi).
1 day after descending node on 19 September 2011 at 19:38 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 2 October 2011 at 09:09 in ♐ Sagittarius.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 19 September 2011 at 20:05 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠22.890° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-22.791° at the point of next southern standstill on 2 October 2011 at 11:38 in ♐ Sagittarius.
15 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 6 days on 27 September 2011 at 11:09 in ♎ Libra 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