Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 51% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 25 December 2013 at 13:48 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 first ∠3° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2014 after 21 days on 16 January 2014 at 04:52.
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 6.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1836" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 172 of Meeus index or 1125 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 52 minutes and it is 28 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2013. 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 shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 17 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 ∠336.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠353°.
5 days since point of apogee on 19 December 2013 at 23:49 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 1 January 2014 at 21:00 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 390 333 km (242 542 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 7 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 356 922 km (221 781 mi).
12 days after descending node on 13 December 2013 at 10:10 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 28 December 2013 at 00:21 in ♏ Scorpio.
8 days since the last northern standstill on 17 December 2013 at 01:00 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠19.570° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-19.537° at the point of next southern standstill on 31 December 2013 at 04:49 in ♐ Sagittarius.
24 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 6 days on 1 January 2014 at 11:14 in ♑ Capricorn 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