Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 55% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 26 October 2013 at 23:41 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 leaving the last ∠2° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♌ Leo later.
Next Full Moon is the Beaver Moon of November 2013 after 22 days on 17 November 2013 at 15:16.
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 8.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1770" and ∠1931".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 170 of Meeus index or 1123 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 15 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 29 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 40 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 ∠285.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠315°.
1 day since point of apogee on 25 October 2013 at 14:25 in ♋ Cancer 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 6 November 2013 at 09:28 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 404 947 km (251 622 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 10 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 365 362 km (227 025 mi).
6 days after descending node on 19 October 2013 at 21:47 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 3 November 2013 at 06:52 in ♏ Scorpio.
3 days since the last northern standstill on 23 October 2013 at 09:13 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠19.509° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠-19.511° at the point of next southern standstill on 6 November 2013 at 06:43 in ♐ Sagittarius.
19 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 3 November 2013 at 12:50 in ♏ Scorpio 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