Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 56% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 15 March 2012 at 01:25 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 ∠17° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2012 after 23 days on 6 April 2012 at 19:19.
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 1.2% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1953" and ∠1929".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 150 of Meeus index or 1103 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 3 minutes and it is 38 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 3 hours and 18 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 44 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 ∠107.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠142.2°.
4 days since point of perigee on 10 March 2012 at 10:02 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 26 March 2012 at 06:04 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 367 053 km (228 076 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 11 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 780 km (252 140 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 13 March 2012 at 20:41 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 13 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 28 March 2012 at 00:19 in ♊ Gemini.
At 14:09 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-22.032°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠21.890° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 28 March 2012 at 23:40.
1 day 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 22 March 2012 at 14:37 in ♓ Pisces 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