Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 56% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 27 September 2013 at 03:56 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 leaving the last ∠4° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♋ Cancer later.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2013 after 22 days on 18 October 2013 at 23:38.
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 7.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1771" and ∠1914".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 169 of Meeus index or 1122 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 58 minutes and it is 43 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 14 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 49 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 ∠249.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠285.3°.
10 days since point of perigee on 15 September 2013 at 16:34 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 day until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 27 September 2013 at 18:17 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 404 644 km (251 434 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next day until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 309 km (251 226 mi).
3 days after descending node on 22 September 2013 at 13:48 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 6 October 2013 at 22:08 in ♏ Scorpio.
At 01:03 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠19.599°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-19.537° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 9 October 2013 at 23:52.
16 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 8 days on 5 October 2013 at 00:35 in ♎ Libra 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