Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 50% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 11 June 2012 at 10:41 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 ∠22° of ♓ Pisces tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Buck Moon of July 2012 after 22 days on 3 July 2012 at 18:52.
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 4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1816" and ∠1889".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 153 of Meeus index or 1106 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 15 minutes and it is 1 hour and 53 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 2 hours and 31 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 32 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 ∠191.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠217.1°.
7 days since point of perigee on 3 June 2012 at 13:19 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 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 16 June 2012 at 01:24 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 394 660 km (245 230 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 4 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 791 km (252 147 mi).
7 days after ascending node on 3 June 2012 at 20:38 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 17 June 2012 at 15:43 in ♉ Taurus.
6 days since the last southern standstill on 4 June 2012 at 17:05 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-21.714° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠21.721° at the point of next northern standstill on 18 June 2012 at 17:37 in ♊ Gemini.
7 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 8 days on 19 June 2012 at 15:02 in ♊ Gemini 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