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 8 September 2012 at 13:15 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 ∠16° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2012 after 21 days on 30 September 2012 at 03:19.
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 7.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1772" and ∠1905".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 156 of Meeus index or 1109 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 16 minutes and it is 24 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 28 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 41 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 ∠283.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠312.9°.
1 day since point of apogee on 7 September 2012 at 06:00 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 19 September 2012 at 02:52 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 404 556 km (251 379 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 10 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 365 749 km (227 266 mi).
1 day after descending node on 7 September 2012 at 02:08 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 20 September 2012 at 12:54 in ♏ Scorpio.
At 18:10 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠21.244°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-21.135° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 22 September 2012 at 00:11.
15 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 7 days on 16 September 2012 at 02:11 in ♍ Virgo 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