Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 49% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 16 January 2012 at 09:08 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 ∠3° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♏ Scorpio later.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2012 after 22 days on 7 February 2012 at 21:54.
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 1.1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1972" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 148 of Meeus index or 1101 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 33 minutes and it is 1 hour and 22 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 49 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 14 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 ∠42.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠70.8°.
13 days since point of apogee on 2 January 2012 at 20:19 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 17 January 2012 at 21:28 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 363 406 km (225 810 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 883 km (229 835 mi).
9 days after descending node on 6 January 2012 at 14:30 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 19 January 2012 at 18:26 in ♐ Sagittarius.
9 days since the last northern standstill on 6 January 2012 at 21:46 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠22.539° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠-22.492° at the point of next southern standstill on 20 January 2012 at 02:12 in ♐ Sagittarius.
24 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 23 January 2012 at 07:39 in ♒ Aquarius 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