Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 45% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 18 December 2011 at 00:48 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 ∠2° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2012 after 21 days on 9 January 2012 at 07:30.
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 0.6% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1961" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 147 of Meeus index or 1100 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 57 minutes and it is 1 hour and 36 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
The length of the current synodic month is 47 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 22 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 ∠21.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠42.1°.
12 days since point of apogee on 6 December 2011 at 01:13 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 22 December 2011 at 02:56 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 365 439 km (227 073 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 3 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 364 801 km (226 677 mi).
8 days after descending node on 10 December 2011 at 07:04 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 23 December 2011 at 11:36 in ♐ Sagittarius.
7 days since the last northern standstill on 10 December 2011 at 13:37 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠22.554° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-22.554° at the point of next southern standstill on 23 December 2011 at 17:25 in ♐ Sagittarius.
22 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 24 December 2011 at 18:06 in ♐ Sagittarius 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