Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 54% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 12 May 2012 at 21:47 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 ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2012 after 22 days on 4 June 2012 at 11:12.
There is medium ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at very acute angle, so their combined tidal force is moderate.
Lunar disc appears visually 1.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1870" and ∠1899".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 152 of Meeus index or 1105 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 29 minutes and it is 1 hour and 14 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 3 hours and 45 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 18 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 ∠168.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠191.8°.
6 days since point of perigee on 6 May 2012 at 03:33 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 19 May 2012 at 16:13 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 383 400 km (238 234 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 7 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 451 km (252 557 mi).
5 days after ascending node on 7 May 2012 at 09:43 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 21 May 2012 at 09:21 in ♊ Gemini.
4 days since the last southern standstill on 8 May 2012 at 06:18 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-21.719° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠21.709° at the point of next northern standstill on 22 May 2012 at 11:13 in ♊ Gemini.
5 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 8 days on 20 May 2012 at 23:47 in ♉ Taurus 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