Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 43% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 29 July 2013 at 17:43 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 ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2013 after 21 days on 21 August 2013 at 01:45.
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 4.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1803" and ∠1890".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 167 of Meeus index or 1120 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 36 minutes and it is 51 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 1 hour and 52 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 11 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 ∠191.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠216.9°.
8 days since point of perigee on 21 July 2013 at 20:27 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 3 August 2013 at 08:53 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 397 479 km (246 982 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 3 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 834 km (252 174 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♉ Taurus at 05:50 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 13 August 2013 at 16:20 in ♏ Scorpio.
10 days since the last southern standstill on 20 July 2013 at 03:12 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-20.097° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠20.025° at the point of next northern standstill on 2 August 2013 at 09:24 in ♊ Gemini.
12 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 6 August 2013 at 21:51 in ♌ Leo 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