Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 49% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 28 August 2013 at 09:35 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 ∠6° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2013 after 21 days on 19 September 2013 at 11:13.
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 6.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1783" and ∠1900".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 168 of Meeus index or 1121 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 45 minutes and it is 47 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 1 minute longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 2 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 ∠216.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠249.2°.
9 days since point of perigee on 19 August 2013 at 01:26 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 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 30 August 2013 at 23:46 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 401 939 km (249 753 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 2 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 883 km (251 583 mi).
2 days after descending node on 26 August 2013 at 08:19 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 9 September 2013 at 17:29 in ♏ Scorpio.
11 days since the last southern standstill on 16 August 2013 at 12:06 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-19.906° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠19.801° at the point of next northern standstill on 29 August 2013 at 17:03 in ♊ Gemini.
14 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 5 September 2013 at 11:36 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